Back in late July 2021, after Sam Reinhart was traded to the Florida Panthers and it was clear that the Sabres and Jack Eichel were heading for a messy divorce, the sense was that Casey Mittelstadt and Dylan Cozens would end up with the two top-six center spots for the 2021-22 season. After Peyton Krebs was acquired as part of the Jack Eichel package from the Vegas Golden Knights, it seemed he would factor into that competition as well.
We are now sitting here on 2/22/22 and none of those three players have established themselves as an immovable top-six center fixture. The player who has, of course, is Tage Thompson: the 6’7… former winger that most had written off as part of the future of the organization. His rise from a relatively unproductive winger whose previous high in points was 14 in 38 games, to a 20-goal center who has 38 points in 47 games has been nothing short of spectacular.
Behind him, though, questions abound as to the future of the Sabres’ center depth chart. Don Granato assembled a combination of Krebs, Cozens and Mittelstadt at practice on Tuesday, with those three players swapping positions. Casey Mittelstadt reportedly took some line rushes there as a right wing, despite him being a left shot and a natural centerman. There is nothing wrong with trying out new things in a lost season, and indeed they absolutely should use this time to experiment when there are no stakes, but this may hint at a broader organizational issue.
Part of the problem in determining where the Sabres should go from here at center behind Thompson (or indeed ahead of Thompson if things go well) is the lack of veteran, established, quality wingers to pair with the young talent that is essentially trying out for the center spot. In a perfect world, the Sabres would have two quality, offensive wingers to flank a potential center candidate, and due to their established nature, it would be easy to see which of Mittelstadt, Cozens and Krebs did the best at the position.
For those who have recently returned to Earth after being away for the last 11 years, the Sabres do not live in a perfect world.
The team has Alex Tuch and Jeff Skinner clicking at a stellar pace with Thompson up top, and after that, well, it’s kind of a mess. Kyle Okposo is having a nice season with 28 points in 46 games, but the 33-year-old isn’t a bona fide top-6 right wing at this point in his career, despite the positive attributes he adds to the intangibles column. After him, the next closest winger in terms of production (excluding Cozens) is Victor Olofsson who has 7 goals and 17 assists in 42 games, followed by Vinnie Hinostroza and Rasmus Asplund who are tied at 17 points.
That’s right: Hinostroza is 7th among Sabres in forwards despite having not played since January 17th.
So, the Sabres don’t have a lot of solid wing options to really test out their centers, and it then makes sense why they would rather assemble a cadre of talented but unproven players who have the most skill on the team outside of the top-three. The problem is – and this is not meant to be a slight towards them – they have no idea what they’re doing. They simply don’t have the experience and positional vocabulary to articulate to one another what is expected of each other.
It's easy to imagine, or indeed to just watch the game and see, that Jeff Skinner and Alex Tuch are constantly communicating with Tage Thompson on the bench to go over the previous shift and give notes on the game moving forward. Skinner and Tuch are playing their natural positions where they’ve been for hundreds of games and they’re completely qualified to dissect the game and let Tage Thompson know where they need him to be to make the whole thing click.
This young guns line will be trying things out for themselves while adapting to changing positions on the fly. That’s where it would be beneficial for the team to have a couple of players who have the skill and knowledge to completely understand the position and merely integrate one of the prospective center candidates into line. Management risks learning nothing about their center candidates if the positions are too far into flux and no one can get into a rhythm, or learn what it takes to excel at a given position.
There exists a possibility that the Sabres land on a positional combination that seems good but could end up being less than the total potential of the line. If each of the players land in a scenario where, say Mittelstadt is at center, Krebs is on the left and Cozens is on the right, and that combination works reasonably well, perhaps they stick with it. Further, it’s near impossible to say which part of the line is working because none of them have a track record, so it’s possible that one player who is in the right spot is dragging the other two along.
We’ll never know if that combo could be better with the players in different slots, and that’s where the lack of established talent comes in. This won’t be an equal tryout because all three players are trying out for all three spots rather than giving the candidates a shot with players who are entrenched at their natural positions. If the Sabres even had one more left wing who could be called a rational 2LW candidate, then perhaps you could put one of the young trio between that hypothetical player and Kyle Okposo to see how things go, even if Okposo isn’t a real top-six player at this point.
These are the types of problems that perpetually rebuilding teams face. There is never enough established talent to merely plug-and-play with the cream rising to the top. It’s a never-ending cycle to fill as many voids as possible without putting players in an optimal position to succeed.
It's not all negatives, though. The flip side of this thinking is the kind of rigid positionality that saw the Sabres refuse to play Sam Reinhart at center before Don Granato saw the light and put him back at his natural spot. Trying things out is a good approach.
It just may not be the best approach. In a perfect world, that is.