The Sabres preseason schedule has concluded with several predictable outcomes coming to fruition: 2020 draft picks Jack Quinn and JJ Peterka have both made the roster. Lawrence Pilut and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen are both bound for Rochester. Kyle Okposo is now captain of the blue and gold.
These were foreseeable events.
The modern mantra of the Sabres under General Manager Kevyn Adams seems to be “no drama,… and no drama is what fans witnessed over the past month. This is not a slight against Adams who navigated two turbulent offseasons after being named General Manager in the spring of 2020, just as the world was being thrown into disarray by the Covid pandemic. It has been clear since the close of the 2021-22 season that Adams had no interest in a dramatic offseason, and that the summer would bring minimal changes to a team that showed some signs of life near the end of the campaign, despite finishing in 24th place overall.
And so a predictable string of events came to pass as spring turned to summer and summer turned to fall in Western New York: the Sabres signed a couple of depth forwards in Riley Sheahan and Vinnie Hinostroza, a depth defensemen in Ilya Lyubushkin, and a (hopeful) 1A/1B goalie in Eric Comrie. The slate of preseason games in September offered fans their first opportunity to see what those additions could mean, and the results were mixed.
Before getting into the analysis of the preseason, it’s important to note that the very notion of analyzing the preseason is a bit of a fool’s errand. Teams are oftentimes either playing with an AHL-heavy lineup against an NHL-heavy lineup, or vice versa, so evaluating individual performances against an opposition that has a wildly different talent level leads to overreactions when the outcomes are either incredibly good or awfully bad.
Newcomer to the crease Eric Comrie can probably relate to the latter (awfully bad) as he saw a lot of rubber come his way during his two contests, with 11 of those shots getting past him for goals against. Of course not nearly all of those goals were his fault as the Sabres put defensemen like Jeremy Davies, Kale Clague and Chase Priskie in front of him. Still, it is a little bit worrying that Comrie wasn’t able to get a win – or a close contest – out of his two starts considering how much he’ll likely be asked to contribute to the crease. The other Sabres goalie currently on the roster was drafted one day after the first "Fast and the Furious… movie came out, and two months before a certain bad thing happened in September of 2001.
The point here is that Craig Anderson is old.
The Sabres are going to need a lot more from Comrie when he’s given a legitimate set of NHL defensemen in front of him; any hope that this season can be something other than another disappointing log on the fire of disappointing Sabres seasons begins and ends with him. The preseason didn’t give a positive indication that would happen, but again, circumstances certainly play into that.
Speaking of circumstance, prodigal son Lawrence Pilut, back from his foray into Russian hockey, looked like he earned a spot on the Sabres roster during the preseason. The aforementioned terrible game Eric Comrie experienced against the Pittsburgh Penguins saw exactly one player finish with a positive plus/minus rating. You guessed it, it’s Pilut. He was always going to be in tough to make the roster because he could be sent to Rochester without having to clear waivers while guys like Jacob Bryson and Casey Fitzgerald have no such waiver exemption. We know from years of watching the NHL that general managers almost always take the path of least resistance when it comes to roster building, and if it’s even remotely close between two given players, the GM will err on the side of caution and make the simple demotion for the waivers-exempt player. In this case, it didn’t look particularly close between Pilut and Fitzgerald/Bryson, but it’s not worth getting worked up over as this is just the way the NHL operates.
Elsewhere, for the 5th season in a row since Jason Botterill traded Ryan O’Reilly to the St. Louis Blues, the Sabres are still trying to figure out who will be the second line center on their team.
It feels like 100 years.
Here are your two candidate lines for the 2nd line as the Sabres near the regular season:
Quinn-Mittelstadt-Tuch
Krebs-Cozens-Peterka
So, yeah, it’s another year where hope rather than proven ability reigns among the middle-six of this team. Casey Mittelstadt had an underwhelming preseason (stop me if you’ve heard this before), and while the skill set still looks like it’s in there somewhere, it’s fair to wonder if he’s approaching Alex Galchenyuk status. That is, he’s not quite good enough offensively for the top-six, and he’s not good enough defensively for the bottom-six. To Galchenyuk’s credit, he’s managed to hang on with 5 different teams over the past six years, but he could never really latch on, and now he’s essentially out of the league after a failed PTO with the Avalanche. Mittelstadt is heading down that path and this figures to be his last real shot to show the Sabres – if not the league – that he has something to offer.
Dylan Cozens, meanwhile, had a better preseason than Mittelstadt which was highlighted by a beautiful breakaway goal. The transition metrics have always been favorable to Cozens, even if his finishing ability hasn’t matched those positive indicators. Don Granato will desperately need Cozens to find his scoring touch if this team wants to make any kind of noise for a playoff spot. Fans understandably love Cozens for his intangibles. They would love him even more if he were able to put up 50 points at center for a young and promising Sabres team.
As for the preseason hype of Quinn, Peterka and Power, they stand pretty much exactly where they were a month ago: Quinn looks dangerous offensively, Peterka looks intriguing if unpolished, and Power looks like he could be a solid top-4 defenseman in his first full NHL season. Nothing in the preseason dispelled these ideas, but until the games are played, we won’t know how these narratives will play out.
On Thursday, though, questions will start to be answered as the team begins the regular season at home against the Ottawa Senators. Real hockey begins this week.