The No. 1 reason why the Buffalo Sabres are again a massive failure

Credit: © Nick Turchiaro-Imagn Images

Another year comes, and another year where the Buffalo Sabres were expected to break through and end their NHL-record playoff drought. It has been this way for two or three seasons now, but this year legitimately felt different. With (presumably) something having to eventually give in the Atlantic Division, the Sabres felt poised to finally take that next step and, at the bare minimum, challenge for playoff contention in 2025.

But as the calendar flipped to the new year and teams returned from their holiday pause, the Sabres found themselves in an all-too-familiar position: the bottom of their division and, even worse, the Eastern Conference.

Full disclosure: I did not have the Sabres making the playoffs when we submitted our Daily Faceoff pre-season predictions. But even though I had the Sabres second from the bottom in the Atlantic division, not even someone as pessimistic as I was on the club could’ve foreseen the tire fire that has ultimately played out in 2024-25 to date.

So what has (once again) gone wrong?

On a macro scale, both the team offense and defense have left a lot to be desired. Ranking in the bottom 10 in both expected goals per 60 and expected goals against per 60, per moneypuck.com, the Sabres have not been even an average play-driving team in either category. Additionally, they have not been able to get quality goaltending aside from James Reimer. Devon Levi and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen were supposed to take the next steps in their respective developments, but neither has been anywhere near good enough; so much so that it has landed the former in the AHL.

When I look up and down the Sabres roster, I see a lot of quality players. Bowen Byram, Dylan Cozens, Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, Tage Thompson – all guys I would take on my team yesterday. But sometimes, as Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli has mentioned several times over the last couple of weeks, the sum of the parts is not anywhere close to the individual talent.

Whether or not Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams wants to admit it, his roster has a lot of redundancy on it. Much was made of the Sabres’ back end coming into this season and how it had the potential to be one of the best in the league. Byram, Dahlin, Power and Mattias Samuelsson jumped off the page as an impressive collective unit.

But when you look beyond the name value and the individual talent of all the players, the redundancy becomes more clear: four left-shot defensemen under the age of 25. Of the four, three ideally need consistent time on the power play to be used to their full potential. Even if you shift one down to the third pair – they currently have all four playing on the top two pairings – it will result in at least one of the aforementioned rearguards playing on their off side, which is easier said than done with the speed of the modern day NHL.

Dahlin is a cut above the rest in this group, so his ability to excel without a quality partner and playing on his off side when need be is superior. But for the other three, the redundancy is something that has been more impactful. Young defensemen greatly benefit from quality partners; we’ve seen it with Quinn Hughes, Cale Makar and Charlie McAvoy playing alongside reliable veteran defensemen early in their careers. Buffalo not only doesn’t have that in the way of veterans on the back end, they lack it stylistically in the way of handedness and style of play. For a player like Power, could he not greatly benefit from a Chris Tanev-type of guy? Could Samuelsson not be best served playing with a puck-moving veteran like Rasmus Andersson?

Overall, the Sabres lack quality veterans in their lineup to play specific roles. It is glaring on the back end, but it has also been a problem up front. Adams tried to address that this past summer, bringing in the likes of Nicolas Aube-Kubel, Sam Lafferty, Ryan McLeod and Jason Zucker. The thought process was right for Adams, but were the players the right ones? And more so, were they good enough?

Zucker has found himself on the top line recently, but is that more out of desperation from head coach Lindy Ruff to find something? Lafferty and McLeod are both on the fourth line; how big of an impact could they possibly have? Names like Nick Foligno and Scott Laughton are the types that come to mind when thinking about what the Sabres need.

As one GM said to me recently, the Sabres have routinely turned over the leadership reins to players not yet ready to assume the roles. They passed the torch to the likes of Jack Eichel, Rasmus Ristolainen and Sam Reinhart early in their careers with the lack of veteran leadership and it failed miserably. We are now seeing a similar path play out with the likes of Dahlin, Cozens and Thompson.

Further to the problems up front, there is also a redundancy (much like we see on the back end) with the players stylistically. Cozens and Thompson, the top two centers, are both shoot-first forwards. They aren’t conventional facilitating centermen that a lot of teams surround with sniping wingers. There is nothing wrong with shoot-first centers – just ask Auston Matthews – but you need to have the right types of wingers to complement them. Like with Matthews and the Toronto Maple Leafs, they have playmaking wingers to complement him. Yes, it isn’t easy to acquire players like Mitch Marner and William Nylander, but the point still stands.

On the wings in Buffalo, I don’t see any facilitating player that can properly complement a shoot-first center. Zachary Benson, Jack Quinn and JJ Peterka don’t seem to fit that bill; Alex Tuch is a straight line forechecker; Zucker is not a long term solution given his age. The lack of versatility up front has even led to Thompson being shifted to the wing recently to play alongside Cozens.

Throughout their lineup, the Sabres have a lack of veteran leadership and versatility. So something has to give eventually, right?

As Seravalli has reported, it sounds like Adams overvalues his individual players. This is normal to a degree with all GMs, but for a team that has had as much go wrong as the Sabres, there is a limit to how much you can love your own players. When names like Cozens and Samuelsson are non-starters in trade discussions, as more than one NHL executive has said to me, on a team that has not made the playoffs in 14 years, there is something wrong with how the roster is being evaluated. Not to say these are bad players by any stretch, but they are not franchise-cornerstone pieces.

Adams locked in the likes of Cozens, Power, Samuelsson and Thompson to major long term contracts without a ton of sample size as a successful, collective unit. Yes, those long term deals can pay dividends in the way of garnering value individually, but you also run the risk of having players get complacent and, worst case, being stuck with a group that cannot collectively get the job done.

The job is obviously challenging, but with a decade and a half of non playoff hockey on the horizon, Adams is staring down the barrel of a tough decision – if not multiple. There are so many coaching and depth roster decisions you can make before taking an axe to the nucleus of the roster. You don’t want to make moves for the sake of making moves, but for a team struggling to find any kind of success like the Sabres are, Adams may have no choice to make the kind of move that comes with an inherent risk. He’s been vocal about his struggles signing top-end talent in palm tree free Buffalo, but that has nothing to do with trading, does it?

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The No. 1 reason why the Buffalo Sabres are again a massive failure

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