Buffalo Sabres

What the Quant Says

269 goals, and the story is not the total — it is how they arrived. Buffalo finished 32.6 goals above expectation at five-on-five, 1st in the league, and by 8 goals over the club in 2nd. Underneath that, the chance creation was 20th at 2.44 expected goals per 60.

The individual rates are extraordinary and almost none of them will repeat. Tage Thompson scored 44 on 242 shots at 18.2 per cent, Alex Tuch 36 on 196 at 18.4, Ryan McLeod 20 on 97 at 20.6, and Josh Norris 21 on 96 at 21.9 — the highest rate of anyone in this edition with more than 50 attempts. Thompson has shot at that level for four years and has earned it; the others have not.

The encouraging half is younger. Zach Benson took 61 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet at 20 — the most interior profile in this chapter — with the best chance share of any forward here, and Jiri Kulich scored 15 as a rookie with the underlying numbers to match.

What the Scout Says

Two shooters, a rush centre, and a group of young forwards who go to the right places.

Thompson's release is the club's whole offence at five-on-five and on the power play, and the caution is the distance — a median shot from 35 feet with a third of his attempts beyond 40 is a volume shooter rather than a net-front one. Alex Tuch is the opposite: 41 per cent of his shots from inside 20, arrived at by beating a defenceman wide and carrying the puck to the net rather than shooting from where he was pushed. His 6 shorthanded goals are speed and reach punishing a careless breakout.

Ryan McLeod is among the faster centres in the league and uses it to arrive first on a forecheck and to recover on a backcheck; the shot is not a weapon and 97 attempts is very low volume. Josh Norris has a genuine scorer's release and an excellent sense of when to leave the puck-carrier for the slot, and does not create anything himself. Jason Zucker is 5-11 and forechecks with real intent and stands in front of a goaltender on the power play.

The two to watch are both young. Zach Benson goes to the net, takes pucks off sticks below the goal line, and reads a play a beat early — the hockey sense is already NHL-standard at 20. Jiri Kulich is a finisher who needs a centre and shoots more than a rookie in fourteen minutes should. Jack Quinn still has the release he was drafted for and takes only 19 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet, which is the whole problem.

What the Quant Says

289 goals conceded and 24th in even-strength expected goals against at 2.65 per 60, with a 27th-ranked chance share to go with it.

Rasmus Dahlin posted 52.9 per cent, the 78th percentile, and it is the only figure on this roster above the 70th. He created 7 more goals than he allowed by expectation and was outscored 65-47 anyway, which is a goaltending problem rather than a defenceman one. Bowen Byram played 82 games — after clearing 42 once in his first four seasons — at 22:42 a night. Owen Power had 40 points at 22 and a minus-13 built almost entirely out of variance at both ends.

Below them it collapses. Mattias Samuelsson was at 45.3 per cent on a long contract, and Jacob Bryson played 622 minutes at a 44 per cent share — the 10th percentile — and his ice went 26-35, five goals above expectation at one end and seven conceded above it at the other. Michael Kesselring arrives from Utah with 6-5 and 89 penalty minutes, which is a thing this blue line genuinely did not have.

What the Scout Says

Three genuine puck-movers, no weight until the summer, and one pairing the club could not afford.

Dahlin is a top-five defenceman in the league: 200 shots from the line, 51 assists, and a game that runs a breakout and a power play equally well. Bowen Byram's skating is the second-best here and he goes to the slot — 19 per cent of his attempts from inside 20 feet is an aggressive profile for a defenceman — and he escapes a heavy forecheck rather than absorbing it. Owen Power moves the puck early and well at 6-6, and the shot has never arrived and neither has any willingness to be physical, which are precisely the two things that would make him a top-pair defenceman.

Behind them the club had nothing that could clear a crease. Mattias Samuelsson can — he boxes out and is difficult to get through in front of the net — and he has cleared 70 games once in five seasons. Jacob Bryson at 5-9 and 177 pounds cannot win a board battle against an NHL forward and was given 622 minutes.

Michael Kesselring is the summer's answer and the right one: 6-5, ends board battles by arriving, willing to take a run at somebody, and 89 penalty minutes that a busy kill will have to absorb.

What the Quant Says

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen went 24-24-5 with an .8866 across 55 games. The club's goaltending came in 15.8 goals worse than the chances faced, 26th in the league.

Put the two headline numbers together: Buffalo was 1st in the league in finishing and 26th in goaltending, and finished with a minus-22 goal differential. A club that got 32.6 goals of help at one end gave 15.8 back at the other, in front of a defence that was already 24th at suppressing chances.

Luukkonen signed a five-year deal on the strength of one good half-season and then had the worst full year of his career. The summer answer was Alex Lyon, who stopped .8965 in 30 games and has never had a save percentage above .910 across a full season. That is a modest answer to the largest problem on the roster.

What the Scout Says

The position that has decided fourteen seasons, and it has not been addressed.

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen is 6-5 and plays a large positional game — deep, square, covering space rather than reacting to the puck. 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 conceding as many interior chances as this one, that is the wrong pair of flaws in the wrong place. There is no visible quit in him and no stretch of consistency longer than about two months anywhere in his professional record.

Alex Lyon is 6-1, which is small now, and compensates with aggression rather than technique — he challenges further out than most, cuts the angle down, and lives with what happens on a lateral play. He is at his best in a run of games and at his worst cold, and the most reliable thing about him is that a bad night does not become a bad month. Undrafted, ten years of being told he was a minor leaguer.

What the Quant Says

24th in the league at 6.44 expected goals per 60, over 5:01 a night — the 5th-most time in hockey and a bottom-ten return from it.

Jason Zucker scored 11 power-play goals, more than a third of the club's total, from the net front. Thompson had 7, Norris 6 across two clubs, Dahlin 5. The personnel argues for far better: a 6-6 shooter, a defenceman with 51 assists, and two men who go to the paint. Getting 24th out of it with the 5th-most time is the clearest coaching question in this chapter.

What the Scout Says

As much raw shooting as any second unit in the league has to defend, and 24th in the standings for it.

Tage Thompson at 6-6 in the left circle is a genuine problem for a killing box — the puck is released from above the reach of a stick that tries to block it. Rasmus Dahlin walks the line and has 51 assists' worth of patience. Jason Zucker's 11 goals came almost entirely from the top of the crease, which is where a power play needs a man willing to stand.

What is missing is the distributor between them. Josh Norris arrives at the puck rather than moving it, Alex Tuch is more dangerous at five-on-five than on the man advantage, and there is nobody on the half-wall who holds it until a killer commits. Getting 24th out of this personnel with the 5th-most time in the league is the one straightforwardly fixable thing in this chapter.

What the Quant Says

11th at 6.54 expected goals against per 60, over 5:02 a game — the 4th-heaviest workload in the league. Comfortably the best phase on the roster and it is asked to work harder than almost anybody's.

Alex Tuch scored 6 shorthanded goals, the most in the league, and Ryan McLeod added 3. Dahlin and Samuelsson take the defensive work, Beck Malenstyn and Peyton Krebs the pressure. The workload is partly self-inflicted — Krebs took 60 penalty minutes, Zach Benson 60 at 20 years old, Zucker 57, Dahlin 54, and Michael Kesselring 89 on his previous club — and a good kill being run this often is a resource the team is spending rather than saving.

What the Scout Says

The best-run phase on the roster, and one worth protecting.

Alex Tuch's 6 shorthanded goals led the league, and they come from the same place his even-strength value does: reach and speed turning a careless first pass into a two-on-one going the other way. Ryan McLeod adds 3 more with the same profile. Rasmus Dahlin plays the hard defensive minutes without complaint and Mattias Samuelsson clears the crease when available.

Beck Malenstyn and Peyton Krebs supply the pressure and the willingness. The threat to the unit is volume rather than personnel — this club takes the 4th-most shorthanded minutes in the league, and it has just added a defenceman who took 89 penalty minutes. A kill that is 11th while working that hard is a resource being spent down.