The Buffalo Sabres are overdue for more bounces to go their way
The Buffalo Sabres have been here before.
Just last season, the Sabres got off to a 7-9-4 start, good for last place in the Eastern Conference, before heating up seemingly overnight and finishing first in the Atlantic Division with 109 points.
From there, they defeated the Boston Bruins in the first round of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs, marking Buffalo’s first postseason series victory in 19 years, before falling to the Montreal Canadiens in the Eastern Conference semifinal.
All in all, it was a highly successful year for a Sabres team that was desperate to finally make some noise. They entered the 2025-26 campaign with the NHL’s longest active playoff drought, and they exited it as a team firmly on the rise.
It’s early, but the Sabres seem to be following a similar path through the early goings of the 2026-27 season. Around this time last year, we here at Daily Faceoff published a column with this headline: “There’s still time for the Sabres to rebound after another tough start.” Frankly, we probably could’ve gotten away with reusing it this time around — because, once again, there’s still plenty of time for these Sabres to figure it out.
At this time last year, the Sabres were playing without many of their top forwards, including Zach Benson, Jason Zucker, and Josh Norris, and they were just about to get a few of them back. In the meantime, they’d gotten meaningful contributions from younger players like Noah Ostlund, who continued to make an impact even after the team got healthy.
This time around, the Sabres haven’t lost nearly as many man-games to injury, but they’re still waiting for meaningful contributions from the likes of Ryan McLeod and Josh Doan — both of whom were among the team’s most consistent performers all of last season. They’re hardly alone: Benson, Norris, Peyton Krebs, and Konsta Helenius have combined for just four goals in 12 games this year.
Instead, the Sabres’ top-level offensive production has been concentrated among a relatively small group of players. Jack Quinn and Tage Thompson lead the team with six and five goals, respectively; beyond them, Ostlund and Olen Zellweger have three apiece, and five skaters are tied with two.
But more goals will come. Benson, in particular, has been snakebitten like few others around the league, having only just scored his first goal of the season in his 12th game despite firing 26 shots on net over that span. According to Natural Stat Trick, the Sabres have out-chanced their opponents 94-42 and out-shot them 86-39 with Benson on the ice at 5-on-5 this season — both astonishing figures by any standard. And while it’s hard to classify an empty-net goal as a “highlight-reel play,” Benson’s incredible effort to seal Tuesday’s win over the San Jose Sharks certainly qualifies.
Doan’s case is slightly more concerning, as he has just three points through 12 games and has posted some of the weakest chance-generation numbers on the Sabres in the early stages of the year. That’s a marked change from last season, in which the former Arizona Coyote was one of Buffalo’s most impressive puck-possession players. Doan is in the first season of his new seven-year deal with the Sabres, but even if he settles in as more of a 40-point guy moving forward, his $6.95-million cap hit won’t be a problem. In the wake of his excellent debut campaign in Buffalo, it’s far too early to write him off.
As a team, the Sabres rank a solid 12th in the NHL in 5-on-5 expected goals percentage this season. Their team shooting percentage is a little worse, but still decidedly middle-of-the-pack. But their most alarming statistic through 12 games is undoubtedly their 29th-ranked team save percentage, which sits at .887 at 5-on-5 and .873 in all situations.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen simply hasn’t been good enough in his first nine appearances, going 3-3-3 with an .866 save percentage. Alex Lyon, who started the majority of the Sabres’ playoff games last season, remains on the injured reserve list and hasn’t played a game this year. For now, that leaves Colten Ellis as the Sabres’ only other option in net, and he came up big with a 23-save shutout in a 2-0 win over the Sharks on Tuesday.
Still, as admirably as Ellis has performed since being claimed off waivers at the start of the 2025-26 season, the Sabres could really use an upgrade between the pipes. For a while, it looked as though they might be the best-positioned team to take a serious run at acquiring Connor Hellebuyck, but the Winnipeg Jets ended up trading him to the New Jersey Devils instead. With that situation now resolved, the Sabres will likely have to make do with their existing options; for them, guys like Jordan Binnington, John Gibson, and Darcy Kuemper wouldn’t be much of an upgrade.
A certain subsection of Sabres fans has become understandably antsy about the club’s extended period of inactivity since the Bowen Byram trade with the Chicago Blackhawks over the summer. We may never know whether Sabres GM Jarmo Kekalainen could’ve beaten New Jersey’s offer for Hellebuyck, but it’s also fair to question whether Kekalainen should’ve done more to replace Byram and Alex Tuch, both of whom played major roles on last year’s team. To put an exclamation point on it all, Tuch scored the overtime winner for his new team, the Washington Capitals, in a 4-3 win over the Sabres last weekend.
But this Sabres team is still growing into its new identity as an Eastern Conference contender, and they still have lots of assets to play with. Trading Byram to Chicago netted them the fourth-overall pick in 2026, which they used on top defense prospect Daxon Rudolph. It won’t be long before he arrives in Buffalo. Meanwhile, if the Sabres decide they want to go shopping for another winger, they still have all of their future first-round picks to dangle, as well as a particularly robust crop of young players and prospects.
Even after subtracting Byram, the Sabres have a terrific trio of top defenders in Owen Power, Rasmus Dahlin, and Mattias Samuelsson. Dahlin missed a handful of games earlier in the year and is already ramping back up to his usual level, while Power and Samuelsson have been consistently fantastic. Meanwhile, Zellweger has done an admirable job of filling Byram’s old spot, and he certainly doesn’t make anywhere close to $12.5 million a year.
The Sabres’ core is largely intact, they’re still within striking distance of a playoff spot, and top prospects like Helenius, Rudolph, and Radim Mrtka are very much still part of the picture. Colton Parayko notwithstanding, they’ve managed to put themselves back on the radar as an attractive destination for players looking for a chance to win.
Now, they actually have to do a bit more winning, and they’ll have a chance to string some of them together with a stretch of upcoming games against the Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings, Ottawa Senators, and Columbus Blue Jackets. As long as the Sabres keep doing what they’ve been doing, they should be just fine — but with a bit more luck, and a nicely timed trade or two, they could creep back towards the top of the Atlantic before long.
_____
PRESENTED BY THE DAILY FACEOFF NEWSLETTER
Recently by Mike Gould
- Which draft lottery contenders need Landon DuPont the most?
- Tiering the Calgary Flames’ trade assets ahead of their next fire sale
- Frost, Zacha lead an NHL center market that is thinner than ever
- NHL 27 Review: Frustratingly low-rent presentation overshadows gameplay improvements
- Sketching out how the Flames can (eventually) trade Jonathan Huberdeau