The Buffalo Sabres play host to the Minnesota Wild tomorrow at 7 o’clock at KeyBank Center in downtown Buffalo. Before getting into that match, though, let’s take a look at last night’s game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Sabres cruised out of Ontario with a decisive 5-1 lead with goals from Jeff Skinner, Tage Thompson, Victor Olofsson, Kyle Okposo and Jacob Bryson.
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Well that was unexpected.
The Sabres entered last night on a six-game losing streak while the Toronto Maple Leafs had won three in a row and were playing in front of a full house for the first time since December 11th. It didn’t matter as the Sabres won easily.
Prior to last night, Jacob Bryson had gone nearly a calendar year without a goal; his last tally was on March 6, 2021 against the New York Islanders in the waning days of the Ralph Krueger regime. In some ways it’s very surprising that he has only 2 NHL goals to his name in 84 career games. He’s an incredibly fast player and even if he doesn’t have a great shot, the 5’9… defenseman has the wheels to join the rush and be the trailer on an odd-man rush. Maybe this goal opens the floodgates a little bit for the diminutive defenseman. For those scoring advanced stats, he led the team in all-situations Corsi-for with 60%, meaning when he was on the ice, the Sabres had more positive offensive events than the Maple Leafs.
Speaking of drought-breaking feats, Kyle Okposo is on pace to do something almost everyone would have thought impossible a year ago, or two years ago or four years ago: he’s on pace to score 20 goals for the Sabres this season. Since signing his 7-year, $42 million dollar contract back in the summer of 2016, Okposo has never hit the 20-goal plateau. He came close in 2016-2017 when he had 19 goals in 65 games during his first year in Western New York, but injuries limited him and he didn’t quite get there. For him to possibly do so at age 33 with all the well-documented struggles he’s endured would be a tremendous achievement for him. The top line continued their sizzling play as well, with Tage Thompson getting his 23rd goal of the season, as well as his 13th point in 13 games, and Alex Tuch likewise picked up his 13th in 13. Jeff Skinner is keeping things close in the goalscoring race between himself and Thompson as he picked up his 21st of the year. Could the Sabres have two 30-goal scorers this year?
Interestingly, the underlying numbers favor the Maple Leafs in last nights game quite a bit, at least as far as Corsi-for percentage goes. Something didn’t feel right, so I went back to see which player struggled according to the fancy stats. Some of the worst even-strength Corsi-for percentage players were John Hayden (25%), Casey Mittelstadt (26.7%), Cody Eakin (26.9%), Anders Bjork (30.8%), and surprisingly, Dylan Cozens (36.8%). Peyton Krebs, Jeff Skinner and Rasmus Dahlin were all over 60% on the positive side of things.
Dahlin had a really nice game when tasked with containing Auston Matthews and the potent Maple Leafs. He finished with a +2 rating and an assist in the contest while demonstrating some excellent playmaking ability in the offensive zone.
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The road doesn’t get any easier for the Sabres for the foreseeable future. As was mentioned in the previous blog, last night kicked off a treacherous stretch of eight games that will see the blue and gold playing some terrific teams over the first half of March, continuing with the Wild tomorrow.
Perhaps it’s time to pump the breaks a little bit on Minnesota, though. A week ago it would have been inconceivable that the Sabres could hang with them, but the Wild have lost 5-out-6 games now, and they are coming off a two-game, home-and-home series against the Calgary Flames in which the Wild were outscored 12-4.
Even the immensely talented Kirill Kaprizov has hit a lull of late with only 3 points in last 5 games, along with a -1 rating. While that doesn’t sound all that bad, keep in mind that this is a player who has 64 points in 50 games this year, along with a +16. Now, it’s definitely possible that this is a case of the Wild hitting a bit of a doldrums, which happens to almost every good team in the course of a very long and grueling 82-game schedule.
The Sabres may have gained an advantage in net if the Wild didn’t have to play Philadelphia tonight. Oddly, the Wild are opting to play Cam Talbot against the Flyers tonight, and Kaapo Kà¤hkönen will conceivably be in net tomorrow in Buffalo. Kà¤hkönen has the superior save percentage (.917% compared to .908%) and his wins above replacement (+1.6) via evolving-hockey also looks better than Talbot (-.7).
Maybe the Wild view the Flyers as an easier game than the Sabres. Either way, that will make it much harder for the Sabres to start streaking.