The Devils took both games against Buffalo and fans’ nerves are frayed
I wanted to give the Buffalo Sabres’ opening weekend series in Prague, Czechia against the New Jersey Devils a couple days to breathe for a few reasons.
It’s easy to have snap reactions to any game and sometimes that’s not for the best. It’s easy to get swept up in the overwhelming emotions of the fans afterwards, particularly in a game I’m not there in person to cover. That’s a lot of noise to cloud the thoughts, not that the noise is wrong, mind you.
The Sabres dropped both games against the Devils by 4-1 and 3-1 decisions and, yeah, the reactions were less than good, and some of that for very good reason.
Now that we’ve had a couple days to digest it, we’re breaking this down by what was good to see, what was bad, and what just didn’t look right at all for the Sabres during their European jaunt.
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The Good
Levi Locked In
Let’s start with Devon Levi. The Sabres’ backup goalie got the call in Saturday’s matchup and played brilliantly for the most part.
Levi made 34 saves in the 3-1 loss and had numerous great saves and read plays extremely well. Of the three goals he allowed, only the Devils’ third goal to Timo Meier is one where I’d question the process. On that goal, Levi aggressively challenged Jesper Bratt as he skated toward the net and in doing so left the net open at the far side and Bratt used Levi’s momentum against him to attempt a speed wraparound. Bratt’s try went off the post and right to Meier streaking in to finish it off.
The issue here is how he played Bratt’s take to the net, not the end result. Bratt had a step on Bo Byram, so Byram switched off to cover the slot while Henri Jokiharju slid over and forced Bratt wide. Levi challenged Bratt who had a lot of speed and appeared to try to poke the puck away but missed. That led to Bratt trying to jam it in around from behind the net and that effort got Byram to try and prevent it. Forwards were late in recovery to pick up Meier and, voila, the 3-1 dagger was cast with under six minutes left in the third.
It’s one nitpick on a play in a desperate moment of the game in which Levi was superb. The Devils generated a ton of quality chances all weekend and Levi was strong to the task. New Jersey’s other goals came on a sick shot from rookie Seamus Casey and a broken play in which Mattias Samuelsson was the lone guy trying to stop a sudden 2-on-1 and made the wrong call trying to lay out to block Paul Cotter streaking to the net.
Since we’re doing goaltending, let’s touch on Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen briefly. Levi’s performance will have a lot of people clamoring to make him the No. 1 immediately (slow down, eh) but Luukkonen was victimized by a brutal in-zone turnover by his teammates, a shot that went off a teammate, and another with his teammates all caught watching the puck. If nothing else, it was a classic Sabres game in which they played not-so great, and the goalie has to eat shit for everyone else’s performances. Considering Ryan Miller was in attendance for the weekend’s games, we’re sure he has a lot of sympathy.
Penalty kill lives
When the Sabres retained assistant coach Marty Wolford, a big reason for that was his work in helping make the Sabres penalty kill a strength of their special teams. The kill went 5-for-6 over the weekend with the one goal against from Seamus Casey’s sublime shot in Saturday’s game.
In those six power plays against (two Friday, four Saturday) they allowed 11 shots on goal and, according to Natural Stat Trick, 24 total shot attempts, 11 of which were blocked. Penalties are a fact of life and they’re going to happen, but if the Sabres can improve upon the massive growth they had on the kill last season, that will be huge.
The Bad
Where to start…
The Sabres looked messy at times, disjointed at others, and struggled to keep up with the Devils. Both teams had to deal with traveling to Europe and the Sabres were there nearly a full week ahead of the Devils after starting in Germany. Travel isn’t an excuse.
What was interesting to see play out was how the NHL group in training camp, which Lindy Ruff and coaches quickly identified and got together, would be able to get locked in on Ruff’s systems and game plan while not seeing a ton of game action in preseason. Turns out it might be a bit more necessary than not, at least, more necessary in a more wrought out schedule.
The NHL group had two preseason games in Buffalo before they flew out to Germany where they had one more game in Munich before facing the Devils back-to-back. Practices are good and necessary, but they don’t replace game reps and it was clear that’s what the Sabres lacked. The Devils had a little bit of extra time together as well as preseason games to get acquainted with new coach Sheldon Keefe’s systems which seemed to mimic what worked well for them in recent years.
The Sabres gave up a lot of odd-man rushes in both games against New Jersey and a lot of that is because of poor rotations in the offensive zone where a defenseman would get deep into the O-zone but a forward was slow to cover for their absence or would be guilty of cheating it a bit to try and keep the attack going. All it takes then is a quick chip past someone and then it’s trouble going the other way.
Defensive zone coverage also seemed harried. Scrambling, looking over the shoulder to make sure they were going where they were supposed to and not leaving an opponent alone to get chances. Transition out of the zone sometimes got sketchy as well where a Sabres defenseman would get the puck and look to start away fast (which is what they want to do) only to have everyone else so far up ice already without a pass made that if there’s a hiccup or turnover, there’s trouble immediately.
The Devils first goal in Friday’s 4-1 was an example of this. Mattias Samuelsson had the puck and had Jason Zucker along the wall to pass to and he had forwards flying up the ice as well. Samuelsson’s pass to Zucker either wasn’t meant for him or Zucker didn’t get the touch pass he wanted to send them up ice and it was intercepted immediately by Jonathan Kovacevic who dished to Stefan Noesen for a sudden 1-on-1 opportunity against Luukkonen in which he picked the corner to give the Devils the lead.
It’s frustrating to see that because the intentions were good on the part of Samuelsson and Zucker, but the Devils had everyone matched up and capitalized with a great shot by Noesen to finish it. But countless times on Friday, less so on Saturday, did we see Devils forwards lurking behind Sabres defensemen when they couldn’t properly exit the zone and had it turn into a Grade-A chance. It’s not necessarily the Sabres being bad (although they looked the part very well), it’s them being out of game practice and the Devils did to them what they’re hoping to do to teams this year.
Ruff said following the Friday loss he thought some of his guys were nervous and that led to poor puck play and mishandles. While they played much better on Saturday, the mistakes that led to Paul Cotter’s goal to make it 2-1 seemed to irk Ruff greatly postgame. A lot of that comes from a lack of sharpness. Of course, other issues helped amplify that…
Ye gods, injuries
The Sabres lost Nicolas Aube-Kubel during Friday’s game with a lower-body injury in which Lance Lysowski spotted him postgame with a brace on his left leg. Not ideal, but he wasn’t the only player hurt in that game. Zach Benson had a lower-body injury he played through on Friday but didn’t feel good about on Saturday and did not play and was replaced by Jiri Kulich. Peyton Krebs entered the lineup in place of Aube-Kubel on Saturday and looked fine and even saw some power play time in place of… J-J Peterka.
Peterka was injured by a heavy, yet needlessly high, hit from Devils defenseman Brenden Dillon in the first period and did not return. Ruff said he’s got a concussion and since they didn’t practice on Monday, we’ll know more about his status, hopefully, on Tuesday. We’ll not get into how Dillon’s hit was changed from a major penalty to an interference minor after officials looked at it, but Peterka going out of the lineup along with Benson is a tough blow.
Peterka’s absence would open things up for Kulich to get a bonafide shot in the Sabres top six and potentially lead to another recall if Benson has to miss extended time. Jordan Greenway jumped onto the top line with Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch in a pinch but that doesn’t feel like the look they’re searching for on such an offensively vital line. That it’s two left wings that are banged up also highlights how that’s a position in need of a boost in the pipeline for offensively gifted players.
Anton Wahlberg plays that spot in Rochester while Isak Rosén plays more on the right wing and Konsta Helenius and Noah Östlund are centers and the only one who’s right there at the door for the NHL is Rosén. They have depth guys like Josh Dunne and Brett Murray who bring more of a bottom six style of play, but with skill and offense their top choices beyond Kulich and Rosén are young. Maybe it won’t be too late to land that top six forward with all that cap space should they need to scramble.
Injuries are part of life in any professional sport and the best you can hope for is to have luck good enough to not be completely undone by them.
The Ugly
The damned power play
Part of what made the entire schedule of events for the preseason so potentially daunting is that, along with cutting into the ability to work the lines and pairs into game action, it also didn’t allow for much practical game work for the new power play to get reps and boy did it ever show.
The Sabres were 0-for-6 in the two games while on the man advantage and generated five shots in goal in the two games and allowed three by the Devils shorthanded. They weren’t able to generate a shot on goal at all in their two power plays on Saturday and were outshot 2-0 by the Devils while on the power play.
The Sabres zone entries were abysmal. Their new system uses the drop-pass to build up speed through the neutral zone to carry in quickly and get the defense on their heels. Only that rarely happened as the Devils lined up three penalty killers on the blue line while the lone forechecker waited out the drop-pass receiver patiently to either disrupt them and take the puck or flush them to a crowd of teammates behind them.
Even when the Sabres were able to enter the zone well and begin to get established, the first or second pass was easily disrupted and allowed the Devils to clear the zone with ease. It was not pretty to watch and after how poorly the power play performed last season, memories of that ineptitude flooded back for everyone watching and more often than not led to, “Here we go again…” comments.
The thing about special teams in the NHL is that they always take time early in the year to figure things out. Teams that start out blazing on the power play almost always come crashing back to earth once there’s enough video to study. In this case, a brutal beginning can be adjusted with time and repetition. Fans are, understandably, short on time and their patience is even shorter and the Sabres have to get their power play down to a science as soon as possible lest they get booed off the ice at home really early on.
With Peterka’s injury to navigate, that will potentially throw a wrench into chemistry building with the top unit. That said, having a known AHL power play weapon like Kulich there helps out immensely.