Watching practices is one thing, but the annual 3-on-3 tournament showed off plenty skill from Buffalo’s young prospects.
A couple of confessions here.
First one: Should’ve had this one done sooner for you all, but I admit it’s summertime and focus can sometimes wane. The lure of sunshine, family, and friends is strong when both are in short supply during the season. We’ll get our act together while we’ve got a lot of time to kill until Rasmus Dahlin signs his eight-year extension and then even more time to kill until training camp.
The second, and more important, confession now.
Watching Sabres development camp practices and drills isn’t going to tell you a lot about the players. The 3-on-3 tournament gives us just a taste of what the players can and cannot do, but it’s just a handful of frames in the feature film of their careers.
Ideally what you see there are the elite players doing the kinds of things you expect them to do and generally outclass the majority of their peers. Those kinds of expectations are easy enough to meet and they were in Buffalo last week.
What’s fun about a development camp is you get to see all of these players at this particular time in their careers. They’re varying degrees of raw and while some are well-polished others are not and that’s OK. There’s also seeing how the players have grown up year-to-year. Noticing the players that are closer to being NHL-sized is easy to do, particularly if you’ve seen them in previous years.
I took some notes on what I watched and what I gathered from talking with a handful of the prospects during the week and, keep in mind, observations like this are a snapshot in time and not indicative of the rest of their careers.
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Let’s start things off with Zach Benson, shall we?
The No. 13 pick of the 2023 Draft, who probably should’ve been selected much sooner than that, showed a lot of what makes him stand out during the week in battle drills and particularly during the 3-on-3 tournament.
He’s quick on his skates. This can be misleading because “quick” often gets conflated with “speed,” but it’s not as if Benson is a slow skater by any means. When I say quick, though, I mean how he moves in situations. For instance, I watched him move laterally as fast as I’ve seen any player on skates move before. Moving side to side on the ice is hard as hell to do and even more difficult to do it fast. Benson was able to do this more than a few times that grabbed my attention in the franticness of drills and game speed.
Lateral speed like that was able to highlight an underrated part of his game, his defensive ability. He’s known to be a tenacious forechecker and he showed that often in the tournament. At one point late in the “semifinal” matchup, he hounded Ryan Johnson for the puck at his own blue line and was able to both steal it and send a pass cross-ice on the tape to Nicolas Savoie (no relation to Matt) create the go-ahead goal late in the game for Team Robert. Had he done this against a camp invite or someone on an AHL contract then you could write it off as the first rounder being that much better than their “inferior” prospect mate. Doing that to another first round pick prospect illustrates the point clearer.
In the video linked above (I’d embed it here but…Elon), you see the tail end of Benson’s work hounding Johnson and the play that develops to create the goal. There’s a lot to like about Benson and having a strong defensive game will get him to the NHL quicker than expected. It’s a moment in a 3-on-3 game that leaves an impression and it might turn out to be one of those “You knew when…” moments.
Let’s talk about Ryan Johnson a little bit.
It’s tough for defensemen to stand out in these kinds of settings because, duh, you’re playing defense and 3-on-3 games aren’t always made for defensemen (Rasmus Dahlin aside). During the games he seemed a bit tentative and I kind of want to chalk that up to nerves. Yes, he’s been to development camp before but this time around he was there as a guy who will play in the Sabres organization. It’s a different kind of mindset. Last summer he was there ahead of returning to Minnesota for his senior season and anything beyond that was up in the air. Being there when it’s the actual start of your professional career is an entirely different mindset.
I’m eager to see him in actual training camp and to play in some preseason games to see how things go there. He’ll most likely be in Rochester this season (I have to say “most likely” because injury apocalypses can happen) and the way he handles professional hockey will be good to watch. He’s had a lot of attention paid to him because of the will he/won’t he signing situation and how he progresses in Rochester and if/when he winds up in Buffalo will be watched intensely by the hardcore fans. It’s not so much about development for him as it is adjusting to the pro game and the speed needed to play and process what’s happening on the ice. He’s had four years of college hockey; he’s arriving as a nearly finished product.
About Anton Wahlberg…
I’m eager to see how his final (?) season with Malmö in the SHL goes because he’s already a big player up front. He arrived at development camp at 6’3” 190 pounds. He’ll grow into his size more with professional training and the Sabres director of amateur scouting said they envision him more as a winger when he comes to North America rather than as a center. Regardless of where on the ice he plays, he gives the Sabres prospect pool something different among forwards: size to go with the skill and maybe even an edge as well.
He looks raw to a degree but a polished kind of raw. You can see how well he handles the puck and he’s already good at using his size to protect the puck and open up other options because of it. His hands are good and he maneuvers well for a young player his size.
I mention the possibility of an edge to his game because he had more PIMs than games played with Malmö’s J20 team (53 in 32 games), but big guys in junior hockey attract a lot of attention, particularly around the net and he was able to use his size to advantage there. How he performs with the Redhawks is going to be really interesting because you ideally want to see some evolution to his game as he gets stronger and adds a little more weight. Playing against the veteran men in the SHL will provide the kinds of lessons he’ll need to apply when it’s time to come over.
Between Wahlberg with Malmö (where he’ll be teammates with 2021 sixth-round pick forward William Von Barnekow) and Noah Östlund with Växjö this season, watching the top-end Sabres prospects evolve in Sweden will be fun to search out for video.
There were a couple of forwards who grabbed my attention. Jake Richard (2022 sixth round) and Viljami Marjala (2021 fifth round). Whenever these guys had the puck throughout the week, they were always trying to do something positive and/or creative with it. Richard had some nifty moves and plays during the tournament and Marjala seemed to be on the puck all day long in every game.
You can see why Marjala was on the Sabres radar because he hounds the puck all over the ice and isn’t afraid to get creative and shoot it. With Richard, there was a lot of offensive skill there and his hands were particularly of note. Playing college hockey will get him involved on the other side of the puck or else he won’t play too much.
Maybe it’s a case of guys trying to do their best to get noticed (because that is absolutely part of the week) or maybe it’s just these guys doing what they’re good at and letting it flow. Regardless of the reasons, it worked, and I noticed them. Richard is headed to UConn in the fall while Marjala will be in Liiga in Finland playing for TPS.
Let’s close this out with some talk about the Russians Nikita Novikov and Viktor Neuchev.
Novikov was one of the highlight players of the week and for good reason. He played in the KHL so of course he’s going to look great, but also he’s a big defenseman who showed he’s got strong ability with the puck and a lot of creativity when he’s attacking the net.
The thought with him is he’ll be a big defender that plays the game with a snarl and can intimidate, but what he showed among his fellow prospects was a guy who’s very good with the puck and doesn’t fear making a play on goal when the opportunity is there. Again, it’s 3-on-3 so everyone is both a forward and a defenseman all at once depending on how things rotate and a guy with a reputation of being physical and mean isn’t going to show that in a development camp, but it’s fun to see that there’s more to him than that. It’ll be fun to watch him in Rochester this season.
Both Novikov and Neuchev were on Team Robert with Zach Benson and all three were occasionally together for shifts during the games. Benson and Neuchev worked well with each other trying to find each other with passes and working together to create scoring chances. With Novikov joining them it seemed a little unfair to those matched up against them.
But with Neuchev there was patience in his play, making sure to slow it down to make the right play, but also the ability to make good passes to set up teammates. Neuchev’s shot wasn’t seen too often but there were a couple of rips that were very impressive and showed that the hype about that is real. I’ll be eager to see what he can do in the AHL to get free for shots and how the adjustment to the game here goes.
There’s a lot to look out for and look forward to when it comes to the Sabres prospects. Even the ones I didn’t have comments on like Max Strbak (2023 second round) who’s headed to Michigan State in the fall, I’m anxious to see how they perform throughout the year.
With so many interesting players it means keeping an eye out all over the place for progress reports is a busy undertaking of its own. Regardless of that, it’s worth doing because for the first time in a very long time (ever?) the Sabres have a prospect system that’s really worthwhile with viable candidates to make it to the NHL.