During the 2022-23 NLL season (yes fitting that this lede comes in my last Sabres post before the new NLL season begins), it was revealed that then-Rochester Knighthawks and now Buffalo Bandits defenseman Paul Dawson had taken on a new nickname — Shooter. This came after the grizzled veteran on the back end, whose career-high for goals in a season of 5 came all the way back in 2011, developed a new habit that season of running in transition and adding a handful of goals during practices despite still sticking to his stay-at-home responsibilities once game day rolled around.

Why am I sharing this now? Oh, are you suggesting that Shooter Samuelsson isn’t the perfect nickname for the 25 year old Sabres blueliner? Yeah yeah I know the locker room has assigned him as Jerry but I’m sticking to it. Guy has 5 goals already for goodness sake.

So what’s changed?

To start, we need to acknowledge that last season wasn’t as bad under the hood as it may have felt, likely further heightened by the team’s collective perception of being easy to push around. With the cap hit under $5M while UFA D are starting to pass that pretty consistently, at a ~50th percentile body of work, even if a trade to shake up the core after another down season was a possibility, the buyout speculation and pleas were probably too harsh. In further context to the below, a 25 year old Rasmus Ristolainen with 1st percentile overall results in 2020-21 netted the organization a lottery pick.

The progression of the last three seasons has led to a player who does belong in a team’s top 6 defensemen. While he’s played most of his minutes this season at 5-on-5 with Rasmus Dahlin once again this season, the pair has positive shot quality shares with and away from each other in the early season. The same is true for his second most common partner, Owen Power. In less time with Bo Byram and Connor Timmins (Both still at 30 minutes or more), both players have positive quality shares with Samuelsson, while dropping under 45% away from him (All Per Natural Stat Trick). With shot quantity hovering near 50% as well in all 5-on-5 situations, even with the smaller sample size still in the results category, I think it’s been consistent enough to put to bed the narrative that Samuelsson needs a “babysitter” as a D partner this season, and that he is also contributing to the positive results.

Even without the goals, the Sabres are suppressing shot quality against overall when he is on the ice this season, so if that continues, it could be enough to cement him as the third (or in some games second) best defenseman on the team. And some of the goals have come in pretty opportune locations.

I had joked on social media that with Rasmus Dahlin’s serious family matter justifiably making it more of a challenge to play up to his full potential and lead to that same high standard, Mattias Samuelsson has been (like a step father), the captain who stepped up. Numerically, Samuelsson hasn’t lost the shot quality matchup since the Utah road game. But the timeliness of his goals has almost filled a “I got you” void too.

With the Sabres behind the 8 ball in the standings heading into Thanksgiving, it is looking like there will be one turnover in the leadership group with the pending UFA status of Alex Tuch, but if Samuelsson keeps up his strong play to start the season, and Rasmus Dahlin continues to chip in as he has since returning from Sweden, and the same goes for Tage Thompson (who, uh, has 6 goals in his last 7 games but because Sammy keeps scoring, it’s not even the biggest goal scoring headline of the month for the team), the on ice leadership appears to be in a good place as things currently stand.

Now if they could just figure the rest of it out, that 4 points out of a playoff spot wouldn’t feel so far away. But in the meantime, keep up the good work, Shooter/Jerry/Mattias.

(Data credit: Evolving Hockey, HockeyViz, Natural Stat Trick)

(Photo Credit: Buffalo Sabres)