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Subban and Survivors

December 4, 2021, 11:56 AM ET [775 Comments]
Hank Balling
Buffalo Sabres Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
It’s a Saturday Sabres gameday with the Carolina Hurricanes hosting the blue and gold in Raleigh for a 7:30 pm start time at PNC Arena. Head coach Rod “The Bod” Brind’Amour has his squad off to an excellent 15-6-1 start which is good for 3rd place in the Metropolitan Division, although the ‘Canes have lost 3 in a row and are a pedestrian 5-4-1 over their last 10 games. The Sabres will likely have a new goalie between the pipes tonight, so let's start there.

Word broke on Thursday that goalie Craig Anderson is now month-to-month with an upper body injury, and one has to wonder if he will ever play for the Sabres again, even if he is reportedly traveling with the team currently. Fellow goaltender Dustin Tokarski is sidelined week-to-week with Covid, so the Sabres had to do something.

Enter Malcolm Subban.

The Sabres acquired Subban from the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday in exchange for future considerations. Subban, 27, is a former first-round pick of the Boston Bruins who has bounced around the league since 2014, and is now on his fourth team. His best season came in 2017-2018 with the Vegas Golden Knights as he compiled a 13-4-2 record with a .910 save percentage. Much has been made of the fact that Subban had a sub-par .893 save percentage with the Rockford IceHogs of the AHL this season, but Lance Lysowski of the Buffalo News dug into those numbers a little bit a little further:

“The start to the season was rocky for Subban. He allowed six goals on 24 shots in his first outing for the IceHogs. Across Subban’s next four starts, he compiled a .911 save percentage, capped by a 20-save performance in a win over Milwaukee on Monday night.”


So it looks like the small sample size of five games severely impacted his save percentage due to one stinker of a performance. Subban has compiled a mediocre career save percentage of .899 in the NHL, so it’s not likely that the goalie will come in and light the world on fire. The underlying statistics do suggest there’s a possibility that he could be an improvement over Aaron Dell, though.

According to evolving-hockey.com, Aaron Dell is now at an incredibly bad -6.8 goals-against-replacement (GAR) through six games with the Sabres this year. Put another way, a hypothetical replacement-level goalie would have allowed nearly 7 fewer goals than Dell during that time. Conversely, Subban posted a -.9 GAR over 20 games with the Blackhawks last year. That stat suggests Subban is essentially a replacement level goalie which would be a massive boon to a Sabres team that needs something steady in net with Tokarski.

One final note on the Sabres goaltending situation: It was nice to see Kyle Okposo take exception to Patric Hörnqvist’s late slash against Aaron Dell on Thursday night. Dell made a save cleanly and had the puck corralled before Hörnqvist decided to take a hack at Dell’s glove, which Okposo didn’t care for. Okposo dumped Hörnqvist to the ice and tried to fight the Panthers’ forward. Both men were given off-setting unsportsmanlike minors after Okposo dropped his gloves. Message sent.

There’s no official word on lines for tonight’s game, though it looks like the Sabres will go with the same group they had on Thursday. Mark Jankowski made his Sabres debut in that game and played reasonably well in 10:45 of ice time, during which he posted a +1 rating. He’s a defensive improvement over John Hayden and any offensive improvement over Hayden’s 1 point in 18 games would be an extra bonus. Casey Mittelstadt’s return meant that Anders Bjork also had to take a seat in the press box. The Sabres have something of a log jam at left wing, and Bjork’s 4 points in 22 games made him an easy choice to take out of the lineup. I see no reason to undo either of those decisions against the Hurricanes tonight.

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Survivors

User washedup20 asked me to give odds on whether any given player currently on the Sabres roster will still be here in two years. That sounded like a fun exercise. For the purposes of discussion, the two-year time frame will be from the trade deadline of this season, meaning that we’re projecting which players will still be in Buffalo at the 2024 deadline. There will be four different categories.

Less than 1% chance: Vinnie Hinostroza, Mark Pysyk, Drake Caggiula, Will Butcher, Cody Eakin, Colin Miller, Robert Hagg, Anders Bjork, Mark Jankowski, John Hayden, Craig Anderson, Dustin Tokarski, Aaron Dell, Malcolm Subban.

No real surprises here other than Bjork, who has been disappointing this season and could be moved as soon as this year’s deadline to create space for a young player in Rochester to come up. That’s a whopping 13 players on a 23-man roster who won’t be here in 2 years. As for takers at the trade deadline this year, Pysyk, Miller and Hinostroza should all attract interest from around the league. The Sabres could get 3rd round picks or higher for all of them.


50% chance: Rasmus Dahlin, Zemgus Girgensons, Kyle Okposo, Brett Murray, Jacob Bryson

Dahlin could very well work his way into a Sam Reinhart situation where he has one year left of restricted free agency and the team decides to move on before they completely lose control of the situation. I’m just not sure that the Sabres are going to commit the Swedish defenseman, and it seems like the fans are starting to turn on him. As for Girgensons, well, he’s been here forever and it kind of seems like he’ll be a lifer at this point. It feels crazy to even say that there’s a chance the Sabres could re-sign Okposo following the conclusion of his contract next season because for the past four years, Sabres fans were plotting how to get rid of him. He is a new man under Granato, with 16 points in 23 games. What a world.


75% chance: Victor Olofsson, Rasmus Asplund, Henri Jokiharju, Casey Mittelstadt.

There’s a belief out there that the Sabres are going to shop Olofsson at the trade deadline. That is a completely nonsensical move for this team that needs to spend money on SOMEBODY next year just to get to the cap floor. I think they keep him and build around him. As for Mittelstadt, it’s possible that he’s moved in a package to collect a first-line center if he doesn’t prove that he can be a top-6 forward this year, but I think he’ll stick around.


Greater than 99% chance: Jeff Skinner, Dylan Cozens, Tage Thompson, Mark Pysyk.

Yes, Mark Pysyk is on this list twice. He will be shipped off the roster at the deadline this year and then brought back as a fourth line forward in 2 years at the trade deadline for a playoff push. No one is taking Skinner, and Cozens and Thompson speak for themselves. They’ll be here.
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