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In this edition of the hotstove, we share our choices for most underrated on the Buffalo Sabres.
Todd Cordell
Lawrence Pilut.
He is a little undersized, and won’t put many points, but he’s a solid puck mover – and transporter – who can help get play moving in the right direction. The numbers certainly back that up.
Buffalo controlled 50.36% of the expected goals, 54.00% of the scoring chances, and 56.05% of the Grade A looks with Pilut on the ice over the last two seasons. Of the 11 defenders to log at least 400 minutes for the Sabres during that period, exactly zero (0) managed to best Pilut in any of those categories.
Despite Pilut leading Sabres blueliners in almost every key metric, Pilut played more AHL games than NHL games from 2018-20.
Forget about being underrated league-wide. Pilut was so underrated that he was underused on his own team – a bad one, at that – and may return overseas as a result.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to say the Sabres messed things up with a future Norris winner. But Pilut is a very useful NHLer and he wasn’t really used like one.
Sean Maloughney
I was going to select Conor Sheary who put up some great numbers with considerably less ice time before being traded to Pittsburgh, but I'll go with a player actually in the lineup in Brandon Montour.
At even strength Montour led the team defense in scoring with five goals. Ristolainen was second with four but Montour also appeared in 15 fewer games than Risto.
Speaking of Ristolainen, he was Montour's most common linemate, playing 334 minutes together at 5 on 5. Together the duo rocked an awful 43.16CF% and out chanced to the tune of 43.12%. When Montour was away from Ristolainen, his numbers jumped up to a CF% of 49.95 and his scoring chances bumped up to 48.26%.
In fact most players on the backend had their numbers improve when playing with Montour; most notably Colin Miller and Rasmus Dahlin. Montour might not have produced as much offense as he was able to in Anaheim but in his defense the Sabres are kind of awful. Despite that Montour has still been able to adapt and help out that defensive core.
Numbers via NaturalStatTrick.com
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