We’re still a few months out from the 2020-21 NHL season getting underway. By the time it gets going it’ll actually just be known as the 2021 season. The Buffalo Sabres roster may not be set, but it’s unlikely that we’ll see any more significant changes.

If that’s the case, it appears as though Will Borgen will once again be buried on the depth chart. After three years of playing college hockey at St. Cloud State and two years in the AHL with the Rochester Amerks, he still hasn’t received a real look in the NHL. Borgen only has four NHL games under his belt that occurred in the 2018-19 season.

Defensive Defender

After that small four-game sample it was assumed that Borgen would get a look last season and it never came to be with the log jam on the blue line. The bad news for the American-born defender is that the right side of the blue line looks to be loaded again. At this moment he’s buried on the depth chart behind Henri Jokiharju, Colin Miller, Rasmus Ristolainen, and Brandon Montour at right defense.

Going into the offseason, I wondered if the Sabres would move some bodies off the roster to make room for him. For a club that talked about efficiency, moving more expensive players to play a cheaper one that would give similar results seemed like an obvious idea. Yet, Ristolainen and Montour look to be on track for another season in Buffalo.

Borgen stepped up playing important minutes last season under Chris Taylor with the Amerks. They relied heavily on him to play the defensive minutes. According to my AHL tracking data, his deployment of 46.15% was the second-highest defensive-zone usage on the team among defensemen.

He still turned out a positive shot share (51.18%) at 5 on 5 with that deployment against the opponent’s top line. Those are encouraging signs for a young player that has been on a nice development path in the last few years.

The one concern you see when you watch him play is his inconsistent passing, which shows up in the tracking data. He’ll miss outlet passes on occasion and tends to just throw the puck out into the neutral which essentially amounts to a turnover.

It’s not something that I would be overly concerned about it. He doesn’t seem to panic with the puck and you can rectify this issue by putting him with a strong puck-moving partner. The reason that Borgen got into trouble at times was that his main partner was Andrew MacWilliam. As you can see above, he was the worst defender on the team in zone exit ability. As a result, Borgen was tasked with handling the exit responsibility on that pair.

An area of his game that jumps off the screen when you watch him is his ability to disrupt zone entries by the opponent. Unfortunately, I didn’t track this stat, but I will next season. Below you’ll see a clip from Kris Baker that shows you what I mean and something you see often watching him play.

Will Borgen stings Conacher, retrieves loose puck, activates. I’ll take that sequence. pic.twitter.com/bFoUn4a0g2

— Kris Baker (@SabresProspects) January 26, 2020

This is an underrated part of the game that the Sabres could use to help their defensive game and allow their more offensively gifted lineup to flip the ice in transition. Entry defense is an area that Borgen would likely be an improvement over Montour and Ristolainen. You’ll see below in Corey Sznjader’s tracking data that this is an area that the Sabres those two struggle in.

You can’t make any statements of certainty with Borgen only seeing limited NHL action, but it wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he could give the Sabres better defensive results than both of the aforementioned defenders on the right side of the blue line. He has a handful of strong defensive abilities and can play on the penalty kill. Not to mention he plays his game with some edge and that would appeal to a segment of the fan base.

Failing to Learn the Lesson

We know what we have in Ristolainen and Montour. Interestingly, the Sabres seem to be ok with the idea of burying him on the roster again. I understand the need for depth, but at the same time, you have to create a path for players that you invested development in to get a chance to play. This is a lesson that you would have hoped they learned with Lawrence Pilut. Yet, history is on track to repeat itself.

A third year in the AHL does nothing for Borgen. He’s fully cooked at this point and it’s time to see if he can be an NHL player. They drafted him in the fourth round of the 2015 draft and he hasn’t given them any reason to believe he can’t play at the top level.

He’ll be 24-years-old in December and aging data tells us that players hit their prime years at this age. He’ll also be a restricted free agent after next season. It seems like this is the year that you would want to know what you have in the player.

We’ll see what happens when the season does get underway, but you have to hope we won’t be talking about another young player blocked negative impact players.

Data via: Corey Sznjader

Photo Credit: Bill Wippert/NHLI via Getty Images