Sabres 2022-2023 UPL

[Jorcus]

There is a narrative by many that UPL has only played well in a stretch of 40 or so games under that last year of Granato. Statistically that may be true but some way or somehow the Sabres seem to win games with him in the net.  His over all record is 163 starts 75 wins 68 losses and 16 OTL's. Not great but not bad. What caught my eye was the 22-23 season. His rookie stat line was 33 starts 17 wins 11 loses and 4 OTL's. Very respectable stat line, but the underling numbers were not. His goals against average was 3.61 and save percentage was .891. So what was the situation? 

The season starts out with Eric Comrie and the aging Craig Anderson in the net. What could go wrong? It went bad early. Sabres go on an 8 game slide in November and Comrie gets hurt. UPL comes up from the Amerks and after losing his first game plays pretty well though December and January. Comrie comes back in late January and UPL starts to sputter. The 3 headed goalie monster kicks in and the Sabres go on a losing streak in March that kind of dooms them until Levi shows up and makes it close finishing the season 5 and 2. 

Obviously the wins in this season were all driven by offense. The question is how did they any games at all with the defense they had. 

79 Games from the 20 year old Owen Power.

78 Games from the 22 year old Dahlin who Granato had to defend to the press about his play in the first part of the season. 

68 Games from the steady if unspectacular Lybushkin. 

60 Games from 23 year old Jokiharju

55 Games from 22 year old Samuelesson.

59 Games from 25 year old Bryson who was -24

The rest were made up with an odd mix of the injured Stilman, Klage, pilut and others. 

But then there is the forward group lacking 2 way players, Skinner, Olofsson, Cozens, Quinn, Peterka. You had a few like Tuch and Okposo and Girgensons. 

Obviously it was all about the offense going off and outscoring the crappy defense and not very good goaltending. How did they keep any pucks out of the net with that crew in front of them? What can UPL do with what is on the ice now vs what was on the ice then? I  think UPL can come around and fit into this system as long as the offense stays alive. 

 

[LGR4GM]

Sounds like Ellis is getting the next start after UPL did well the last couple. 

I bring this up because here are their starts:

UPL: .818, .912, .875, .900, .870, .967, .833, .958

Ellis: .935, .889, .857, .970, .829, .917

These guys are running at very similar rates as each has 50% of their games with bad sv%. Should be interesting to see what Ellis puts up tomorrow in Philly.

[quill]

IMO UPL has always shown he has the potential to be a good goaltender, but not more than an average starting NHL goalie, and certainly not the type of goalie who has shown that he could become the goalie who can make the BIG saves and make those types of saves consistently, at least not so far. Ellis to me has at least shown the potential to be the kind of goalie who will develop into a really elite goalie the way he battles to no end to make a save. Right now, whether or not he makes the save, he moves much more quickly in the crease than UPL and he's much quicker to recover from an initial save than UPL when getting into a position to make the second save on a shot. The more Ellis is played, the more I think he will refine his skills and use his quickness and vision to become the type of goalie this team has been wanting for a long time. There is only one way to find out.