The end of season availability fires up the offseason hot stove, but what’s real and what’s not is often obfuscated.
It hasn’t been a common occurrence to have the Buffalo Sabres end-of-season press conference with the coach and general manager be an upbeat, glass-half-full kind of occasion. These days are different though, what with the very young and very talented group of players on the roster just starting to find their footing in the league and having success early in their careers. Hopes are high all over the place within the organization, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be 100 percent up front about everything.
Anytime a team official speaks, there are shades of gray involved and GM Kevyn Adams is no different. He’ll be frank and tell us the truth about a lot of things, but sometimes it’s a carefully worded truth. And that’s OK, it’s part of the game and teams are going to keep their opinions of players and situations to themselves more often than not (unless things go really sideways, then look the hell out).
So, when Adams faced up to us this morning, his outlook was cheery and upbeat and why wouldn’t it be? The Sabres had their best season since 2010-2011 and multiple players had huge seasons and would appear to be on the upward swing. But what’s said can obscure what’s not being said as well, and there is a lot to look into. Rather than have you all read thousands and thousands of words, I’ll break these topics up into subjects for future releases.
Today, we’ll focus on the position that will be the most scrutinized and most watched this offseason: goaltending.
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A major question about the Sabres for next season revolves around goaltending and for good reason. Sabres netminding was overall mediocre and inconsistent. There were glimmers of hope throughout the season from each of Eric Comrie, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, and Devon Levi. We’ll leave Craig Anderson out of this discussion, despite his mostly solid play, because he’s retiring.
Adams on his goalies:
“You know, I think Eric Comrie had a really good start to the year. Gets the injury, kind of had his ups and downs but it’s tough, he didn’t get into a rhythm. It’s one of those things that was challenging for him. UPL, I mean, if you look at where we were a year ago to now, and I talked to you guys over and over about we believe in UPL and he’s young, he’s learning, he’s growing, where was he going to get his games? We were going to let him kind of decide that and when Coms had the injury, came up and he was inconsistent at times, but the overall, really solid for us.
“He started a lot of games, he won a lot of hockey games, he won 17 games and showed progress. I think sometimes we weren’t great in front of him and if you’re just looking at the raw numbers that everybody looks at, we’d look a little deeper with certain things when we track goaltenders. But just, you know, we’d say, ‘Oh, we’d like to see this a little better or that a little better.’ Of course, there were some games that maybe we weren’t great in front of him or maybe they get a couple late goals and it’s affected. But in terms of confidence and belief, really good with UPL.”
Adams is being as straightforward as anyone could be in regard to Comrie and Luukkonen and it’s all more of a statement of fact. One part that got me to tilt my head was Adams saying, “we believe in UPL” and that he’s told us that over and over.
Call it fuzzy memory or call me old or what have you, but I struggle to remember Adams definitively saying outright they had faith in Luukkonen and stood by him. Actions may speak louder than words here, because every move they’ve made with Luukkonen points to wanting to develop him properly and try to ensure he gets as many games as he could. When Comrie was signed this summer, it essentially assigned Luukkonen to Rochester instantly. Remember a year ago, Luukkonen had the opportunity in training camp to win an NHL job and wound up having the worst preseason out of everyone and was sent to the AHL. It’s something where you choose to believe what you want to.
If you think the Sabres have always believed in Luukkonen and wanted to develop him and bring him along to be an eventual No. 1 goalie, then yes, it’s easy to buy into the thought they’ve always believed in him. Then again…they signed Comrie in the summer and Levi took everyone’s job away at the end of the year. There’s leeway all around but consider me skeptical in regard to their belief in Luukkonen.
He saved the Sabres season with his play in December and January when he went 12-4-1 with a .908 save percentage and earning wins on the road against Colorado, Vegas, Boston, and Washington and home wins against Minnesota and New York Islanders. The majority of that time came with Comrie out with a lower-body injury and Anderson playing once a week. They needed Luukkonen to play, and he played very well and earned starts for the next couple months because of that. His play fell off and their faith waned, even when none of the goalies were playing particularly well.
Then there’s Levi and the question of whether or not he can be one of the main guys in Buffalo next season, or even the guy. It’s the question and debate point we’re going to deal with all offseason long so gear up for it because that discussion will not stop.
“Every player is different. I hate thinking about it as putting a guy into a box and saying, ‘This is what you have to do.’ In my opinion what you have to do is be open-minded, take all of the information in and then make the best decision you can for the organization and the player. Devon is very unique. I want our players to be fearless and that’s how we’re going to run the organization, too. Donny and myself, we are going to be fearless, and we’re going to trust and believe in our players. When we think they’re ready and in spots to succeed we’re going to help them. For me looking at Devon, I see a special person, I see a special work ethic, a special talent. We’ll evaluate through the summer. But I think in the small sample size he showed what he can do in this league and it’s exciting.”
I compliment Adams and Granato for not sticking to the conventional norms of how to build a lineup or a team. Almost every switch both of them have pulled has seen varying levels of success. Not everyone would put Tage Thompson at center, things of that nature and such. The idea of having Levi being prominently involved at the NHL level next season with a minimal track record of games feels like a big gamble but also could be the smartest option.
Levi showed a lot in a few games. He showed a tremendous amount of confidence and swagger for someone that just came out of college and jumped right into NHL action. There’s a lot to like about how quick he plays the position, how aggressive he is in the net, and how the team appeared to play more relaxed and confident when he was out there. These are all reasons to believe he can handle this spot and the rigors of daily NHL life. But there’s still the seven-game track record that’s difficult to look past.
I keep going back to Jeremy Swayman in Boston when he came out of the University of Maine in 2020. In 10 games with the Bruins, he went 7-3-0 with a .945 save percentage on a team a year removed from playing in the Stanley Cup Final. That’s a fair bit different than Levi playing on a loosey-goosey, run-and-gun Sabres team in which he went 5-2-0 with a .905.
It would’ve been very easy for the Bruins to hand the starting job to Swayman, especially with Tuukka Rask’s career coming to a close, and letting him roll with the gig. Instead, they hedged their bets and signed Linus Ullmark to a four-year contract and had the two of them split starts each of the past two seasons. That’s worked out pretty well for them, to say the least.
The problem for Buffalo is there’s not an Ullmark-like goalie available in free agency to sign as a failsafe in case Levi struggles and they’ve still got a pair of other younger guys under contract in competition for the job as well. This is where Adams is in a bit of a spot.
The past two summers, he’s addressed goaltending rather curiously. Two years ago, he thought there was a deal in place for Ullmark to re-sign to stay in Buffalo only to see him jump to Boston and it left the Sabres in a lurch because they missed out on most of the more desirable free agent goalies. It led to them signing Anderson and Aaron Dell in the middle of the evening on day one of free agency and hoped they could hold it down for the season.
While Anderson played well enough, Dell was terrible. Dustin Tokarski beat him out for the backup job, but Dell ascended to the job again when Tokarski went out for an extended period dealing with COVID. Dell played poorly enough that Buffalo traded for another goalie (Malcolm Subban) to supplant him. When Subban was injured, Luukkonen got the call from Rochester and Dell only returned to Buffalo (briefly) when Luukkonen was injured. Dell went 1-8-1 with a .893 save percentage in Buffalo.
That’s just one year’s worth of goalie mayhem because of a miscalculation in free agency. Signing Comrie didn’t turn out to be a disaster, fortunately, but injuries again made things tough. You can’t predict that sort of thing but signing Comrie to essentially be the starting goalie after he had 19 strong games with Winnipeg last season was still a gamble.
Adams cannot gamble on goaltending again because now that the expectations have gone up again for next season and after how inconsistent goaltending was this season, if the position is an issue again the treatment by fans and the rest of us in media won’t be so positive. Goaltending is a known issue, and has been, but the previous two seasons didn’t come with hope or expectation of making the playoffs, at least from outside of the locker room.