The Hopium Den: 10 reasons why the Sabres could be better this year

[Night Train]

Score 1 more goal a game 

[dudacek]

1 hour ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

Sadly, they can, as they have proven the last two seasons.  This is the pts trend under Adams leadership - 91, 84, 79.  
 

10 reasons they could continue to regress

1.  The Atlantic division is deeper than ever.  Det, Mon, and Ott are actually improving while the Sabres have regressed

2. Adams traded away another young developing scorer, who has improved each of his 3 NHL season, for two depth players who may or may not have upside.

3.  McLeod is almost certain to regress.  He is a career 11.9% shooter who had a career year last year when shooting 20.9%. 

4.  The goaltending is woefully inadequate.  The save % of our 4 goalies last season were as follows - UPL .887, Levi .872, Georgiev .875, and Lyon.896.  League average last season was .893 in all situations.

5. Norris unlikely to play enough games to adequately replace Cozens.  Norris has never played more than 66 games in a season and has averaged only 47 games a season during his time in the NHL.  Remember he was shutdown after only 3 games last season following the trade from Ottawa.

6. The entire failed coaching staff returns including special teams failure Appert and defensive failure Wilford.  

7.  The team again refuses to spend to the cap and with the cap rising quickly, the Sabres are likely to fall further behind. Remember that teams that don’t spend to the cap rarely make the playoffs.

8.  The defense remains defensively suspect.  Byram, Power, Samuelsson and Bryson are still inept defensively. Kesselring and Timmins maybe upgrades defensively over Joki or Clifton, but neither has ever been a full time top 4 defenseman.  Timmins has averaged less than 16 minutes a night for his career and last season was his first in 6 years as a full time NHLer.  Kesselring played under 18 a night last season and while he did fill in the top 4, as soon as Utah got healthy he was relegated to the 3rd pair.  He did have a solid all around season, but it’s fair to wonder if he is ready to pair with a player as defensively inept as Power for 22 minutes a night.  It’s also fair to question whether the addition of two 3rd pairing D is enough to elevate a group as terrible as the Sabres have been defensively for years. 

9.  I am a big fan of both Benson and Kulich, but Sabres are betting on their continued improvement, plus rebounds from injury prone guys like Quinn and Norris, plus continued success from Zucker and McLeod, to keep the offense working. Also don’t forget we don’t even know who the 9th top 9 forward will be; will it be the injury prone and scoring challenged Greenway or a bet on another young player with 62 games of NHL experience in Josh Doan. That’s a great deal to ask and comes with a high risk of failure.  If the offense regresses, it raises the odds of another regression by the team significantly. 

10.  Kevyn Adams is still the GM.

I understand that the fans here want to have some hope that the 15 years of wandering in the hockey desert as punishment for the “tank” might end this coming season, but honestly we need to temper our expectations for a team put together by GMKA (aka Howdy Doody).

This has no place in the hopium thread.

Plenty of of other places to talk about this.

[GASabresIUFAN]

56 minutes ago, dudacek said:

This has no place in the hopium thread.

Plenty of of other places to talk about this.

I mentioned hope in my post.

[Taro T]

11 hours ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

I mentioned hope in my post.

Yes, you said fans want to hope after providing 10 reasons they shouldn't have any.  Clearly you were taking the tenor of @dudacek's original post to heart.

[Thorny]

On 9/10/2025 at 12:02 AM, dudacek said:

1 Tage Thompson is going to have a monster year
Everything I’ve seen on the ice the past few years has convinced me that he is top-tier talent; very few players have his physical gifts and his ability to create his own offence. Everything I’ve seen and heard off the ice this summer is that he is hyper-focused on breaking the drought and making the Olympic team in the process. He’s going to be a game breaker

2 Zach Benson is going to improve the top 6
The analytics don’t lie: Benson tilts the ice no matter who is with or against him. He’s going to keep the puck pointed away from our net and towards theirs in a way others couldn’t. He’s going to do the dirty work of getting to the net, forcing turnovers and making plays in tight the way that others wouldn’t. He’s going to keep the goals against down, do all the little things to make Tage’s life easier and he’s going to start unlocking his offensive skillset in the process. Third season jumps for skilled forwards are a real thing.

3 Josh Norris will be a notable upgrade on Dylan Cozens
I’m not going to repeat the excellent work @mjd1001 did on how Cozens was a black hole that swallowed offence and served up chances. ‘Decent’ would be an upgrade in his role, and Norris is better than decent. His shoulder is healthy and the rest of his body is no more at risk than anyone else’s. He’s gonna play and he’s gonna help.

4 Jack Quinn will replace JJ Peterka
I’m not sure where it all went wrong for Quinn last year, but track records have to account for something. Quinn was better than Peterka in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 — both offensively and defensively — before last year saw them switch places. He’s coming in fit and highly motivated, and Peteka’s offensive minutes should be his for the taking. He got 40 points last year playing like *****. He won’t play like ***** this year.

5 Michael Kesselring is exactly what the blue line was missing
I’m not sure you could have plucked a more suitable player to match the prototype of what the Sabres were looking for: a big, enthusiastic, right-handed defenceman with good underlying numbers and something to prove, who will play hard and answer the bell. He will provide competence to go along with both depth and edge, and make all three pairs better because the pieces will finally fit.

6 Josh Doan is exactly what the forward ranks were missing
I can’t count the number of times Sabrespacers have screamed for a player to forecheck, to back check, to hit, to get to the net, to stick up for his teammates, to work, to care. Josh Doan is all of these things. Whether he’s on the 1st line or the 4th, he’s going to do the dirty work and inspire his teammates to do the same. He’ll be fan favourite by Christmas.

7 Lindy knows the roster and they know him
I’m not absolving the coach or the players for the lack of preparation and the piss-poor job they did connecting with each other last year. But this year, there will be no learning curve and no surprises. The coach knows what most of this team is capable of. The pieces that did not fit were ejected. Pieces were acquired to fill what the coach thought his roster lacked. Expectations are firmly in place and plenty of secondary roles are there to be won or lost through internal competition. Ruff’s legacy is on the line.

8 This defence corps is going to create a *****-ton of offence
Concern has rightfully been expressed about the Sabres lack of playmakers down the middle, but I’m not sure enough has been said about the embarrassment of playmakers they have on the blue line. Buffalo has FOUR of league’s top 50 point producers at even strength on the blueline: ranking 4, 15, 17 and tied for 40th overall. People are drooling over Montreal getting Dobson. Kesselring matched him point for point at ES and he’s the worst offensively of the Sabres 4. Dahlin is elite and none of the other three have hit their peak. It’s a rare mix and could create nightmares to defend against.

9 The team is going to play better defence
We’ve talked a ton about how bad the Sabres were at defence, but not as much about how the roster changes might affect that. Cozens warts have been thoroughly discussed, Peterka had some of the worst defensive underlying numbers in the league, Lafferty sucked, Clifton analytically was one of the league’s least-effective regular defensemen, Jokiharju had no role, and Bryson played too much. Norris, Doan, Danforth, Timmons, Kesselring, and Jones are, respectively, each better at defending than the guy they are replacing. Analytically speaking, Doan, Kesselring and Timmons are actually outright good at it. None of that includes the defensive improvement that usually comes with experience for younger players.

10 The goaltending can’t possibly get worse
As a team, the Sabres ranked 29th in S% last year with 89.9%. The previous year, they were 14th with 91.4%. Luukkonen went from 19th in Goals saved above expected (min 10 games) 2 years ago to 60th last year, an 18-goal differential. Levi went from 15th to not qualifying, but he had a similar 18-goal drop. Luukkonen’s save percentage was 12 points below his career average and 23 points worse than his previous year.  Levi was 24 points behind his career average. Alex Lyon is a career .902 goaltender, putting up .904 and .896 the past two years on a defensively poor Detroit squad. Historically, these goalies should be better than they were last year.

Chance of happening, Likelihood it makes up ground vs other teams

1) 8/10, 4/10

2) 9/10, 2/10

3) 3/10, 7/10

4) 2/10, 8/10

5) 8/10, 9/10

6) 2/10, 2/10

7) 10/10, 1/10

8 ) 10/10, 9/10

9) 7/10, 3/10

10) 9/10, 2/10