This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen
Buffalo Sabres Goaltender
An .8866 across 55 games, and the single largest reason a club that finished 1st in finishing missed the playoffs.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | BUF | 4 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 14 | 3.88 | 0 | 149 | .906 |
| 2021-22 | BUF | 9 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 23 | 2.74 | 0 | 277 | .917 |
| 2022-23 | BUF | 33 | 17 | 11 | 4 | 115 | 3.61 | 0 | 1054 | .891 |
| 2023-24 | BUF | 54 | 27 | 22 | 4 | 132 | 2.57 | 5 | 1470 | .910 |
| 2024-25 | BUF | 55 | 24 | 24 | 5 | 169 | 3.20 | 2 | 1490 | .887 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 155 | 71 | 65 | 15 | 453 | 3.06 | 7 | 4440 | .898 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
24-24-5 in 55 games, .8866 with a 3.20 average and 2 shutouts on 1,490 shots.
Buffalo’s goaltending came in 15.8 goals worse than the chances faced, 26th in the league, in front of a defence that was 24th at suppressing them. The club finished 1st in the league in finishing, 32.6 goals above expectation, and still had a minus-22 goal differential. This is where it went.
The Physical Game
6-5 and 223, and he plays a large, positional game — deep in the crease, square, relying on covering space rather than on reacting.
The lateral quickness is the specific weakness. A puck moved across the slot finds him late and he arrives at the second chance later still, and the rebound control is ordinary, which compounds it. Behind a club that concedes as many interior chances as this one, that is the wrong set of flaws in the wrong place.
The Mental Game
He signed a five-year contract on the strength of one good half-season and then had the worst full year of his career, which is a difficult sequence at 26.
There is no visible quit in him and no record of a bad goal becoming a bad period. There is also no stretch of consistency longer than about two months anywhere in his professional record.
The Intangibles
A second-round pick, six years in the organisation, and the starting job by default rather than by winning it.
The club is committed to him and has no alternative, and the honest reading is that a .887 is not a level any team makes the playoffs with. Everything Buffalo did well last season — and it led the league in finishing — was undone here.