After struggling last year, Sabres’ Tage Thompson is back
Buffalo Sabres forward Tage Thompson had a down year last season. After posting a career-best 47 goals and 94 points during the 2022-23 campaign, last season Thompson scored 29 times and finished the year with 56 points. Not too worry Sabres’ fans, Thompson is back in a big way this season.
The 27-year-old has scored seven goals in his first 10 games, has 12 points total, and is a big reason why the Sabres are in the mix in the Atlantic Division. Thompson leads all Sabres in goals, points, and is averaging 19:18 of ice-time per game, which is a career high.
As Thompson goes, the Sabres go, so Buffalo needs the former first-round pick to continue his strong play if the team is finally going to get back into Stanley Cup Playoff contention.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli discussed Thompson’s bounce-back season.
Yaremchuk: The player I wanted to give some love to is Tage Thompson. Seven goals in 10 games. We all remember a few years back when he burst onto the scene with a 38-goal season, followed it up with a 47-goal season. And, it was like – ok this guy looks like a superstar.
Then last year, a little bit of a step back with 29 goals in 71 games, and I know that’s still a 30-goal pace, but coming into this year I think it was, and whether it’s fair or not, it was a little bit of – like ok, are you going to be in the 20-goal range again? And, is that big 47-goal season going to be the anomaly we look back at in Tage Thompson’s career? Or, are you going to return to that 40-goal pace and are we going to sit there and look at the 29-goal season and say ‘yup, just a blip, this guy is a superstar’. What we’ve seen through 10 games for the Sabres, is a lot of production and the question of – boy if Tage Thompson wasn’t producing like this, the Sabres would not be 4-5-1.
Seravalli: Yeah, I’m bullish on the Sabres, I am. Considering the way that they’ve started 0-3-1 and the lack of scoring that they’ve had to start. I think there’s a lot of kinks to work out, and still some summer-hockey elements to the way that they defend. But, I think the Sabres are going to figure it out.
For the entire trick-or-treat episode, with all the latest from around the league, watch the full video here.