The Buffalo Sabres went into the offseason with questions about their plans in goal moving forward. Both Linus Ullmark and Carter Hutton were unrestricted free agents. It was expected that Hutton wouldn’t return, but Ullmark is the move that didn’t go the Sabres way. He ended up signing with a divisional rival, Boston Bruins.

Kevyn Adams was left to explore plan B or maybe it was plan F. I guess we’ll never know.

Anyways, they brought in two veteran goaltenders in Craig Anderson and Aaron Dell via free agency. Both were signed to league minimum one-year deals. The only difference is Dell’s contract is actually a two-way deal. We’ll get back to the significance of that in a moment.

It shouldn’t be overlooked that they made another goaltending addition in the Sam Reinhart trade to the Florida Panthers. They acquired Canadian-born goalie Devon Levi. He falls into the prospect pool with Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Erik Portillo.

Luukkonen’s Opportunity

On the opening day of free agency, it appeared that the plan was to have Anderson and Dell be the tandem this season with the Sabres. Luukkonen would then play in the AHL for the Rochester Amerks with Dustin Tokarski and Michael Houser.

Then a few days later a different possibility for the goaltending plan in Buffalo started to formulate. When discussing his free agent moves, Adams made an eyebrow-raising comment while discussing his goaltending situation. “I want to make it clear that we have no timeline on a young player like UPL. If we feel that he’s ready to go, we won’t hold him back.” He went on to say that Luukkonen would have to earn the opportunity in camp, but that opened the door to the possibility of him playing in the NHL a lot next season.

In his introductory media call, Anderson described his role as the Sabres as one where he’ll compete for playing time and act as a mentor for a young roster. “I feel like I can still kind of give back to the game, give back to the organization, the guys there. Share my knowledge and still compete.”

Lastly, let’s go back and add that Dell is signed to a two-way contract into the mix. He would require waivers to be sent down to the AHL, but they signed him to that type of deal to pay him a cheaper salary if he’s assigned to the minors for an extended period. Perhaps they have a plan to carry three goaltenders in the NHL. They have the cap space to do it and there will still be Covid-19 concerns.

A lot of signs point to Luukkonen getting a real opportunity to play in the NHL this season. He saw his first action in the league at the end of last season and played well. In four appearances, he put up a -1.22 goals saved above expected in Evolving Hockey’s model. It was a small sample, but it was the highest GSAx number any Sabres goaltender put up last season in all situations.

The Finnish goaltender has had an up and down career since he was drafted in the second round of the 2017 NHL Draft. His D+1 season was fine playing in Finland’s second-tier pro league. It was his D+2 season where he really impressed. He put up a .920 save percentage in 53 games with the Sudbury Wolves of the OHL. He was named the OHL Goaltender of the Year and OHL Most Outstanding Player.

On top of all of that, Luukkonen backstopped Finland to a Gold Medal at the U20 2019 World Junior with a .932 save percentage in six games.

The next two years are where things started to get shaky for the 22-year-old. He had hip surgery after the 2018-19 season and it didn’t allow him to have a normal offseason. He put up good numbers in the ECHL during the 2019-20 season and was named an ECHL All-Star. His performance in the AHL, however, was poor in 10 appearances. He posted a .874 save percentage.

Last season, once again his offseason was impacted. This time it was due to Covid-19. He was forced to start the season in the Finnish pro league Liiga. His numbers were good with a .908 save percentage. Then he came over to Rochester when the season started and had an inconsistent campaign with the Amerks.

In 14 games he posted a .888 save percentage in the AHL. Personally, I felt he looked better than the numbers indicate here. The Amerks were a team that gave up a lot of shots and quality chances last season with a young roster. Luukkonen’s number really started to slide in the back half of that season after the team went through an extended Covid-19 pause.

As I mentioned, when he got a small taste of NHL action he was impressive. That may have been enough to give Sabres management the belief that he’s ready to play at the highest level.

Using History to Set Expectations

I wanted to go back and look at how goaltenders around Luukkonen’s age performed in the NHL the last few years to help set a proper expectation for next season. We’re seeing more goaltenders at a younger age play in the league than we have in the past.

To start, I used data from Evolving Hockey to see how many goalies played in the NHL over the last four years that were under the age of 22. I wanted to see if I get a gauge of what age most goaltenders are breaking in.

You’ll see above that most goaltenders are still entering the league between the ages of 24 and 25. It lines up with the premise that they take longer to develop and are on a different age curve than skaters. Luukkonen would be on the younger side of when his position group usually enters the league, but he does have two years of pro experience under his belt.

I narrowed my focus and broke the players that appeared in at least 300 minutes of game action in a season under the age of 22. I wanted to begin to gauge performance and how many games, on average, they played. Over the last four years, goaltenders under the age of 22 averaged games in a season and none played more than 47 games.

This is a similar approach that the Sabres would probably want to take with Luukkonen. He would split time with Craig Anderson and probably max out around 30 games in the NHL. They can supplement some AHL time in there, especially during the Olympic break if the NHL does send their players. Aaron Dell can fill in the remainder of the games because I don’t think they want Anderson playing 52 games at the age of 40.

Gauging actual performance expectations is difficult to do for goaltenders on a regular basis. Things can vary from year to year based on the team and other factors surrounding the player. Having said that, we can still take a peek at how goalies under the age of 22 performed the last four years in some shot-adjusted metrics.

Above you’ll see the players that played at least 300 minutes under the age of 22 over the last four years. The different color bars indicate their age at the time they put up these goals saved above expected numbers. Most of the players are in the range of a 3 to -3 GSAx in all situations. That usually amounts to being league average.

If we narrow the focus further and just look at the performance at the age of 22 we see similar results.

The different color bars in the chart above give you an indication of how many games each of these goaltenders appeared in. Once again we see most fall into that 3 to -3 range.

Conclusion

If the Sabres do plan to give Luukkonen more NHL time this upcoming season, we can make a few assumptions based on recent league history. He should probably only play around 35 games as the ceiling next season and a reasonable expectation in performance would be close to league average for his age.

Adams has put himself in a good situation here with Luukkonen. He has surrounded him with veterans at both the NHL and AHL levels. They’re also not forced to keeping him in the NHL if it becomes evident early on that he’s not ready to handle that workload.

Luukkonen is one of the more interesting storylines for me this season. Not only because of his potential impact on the NHL roster, but we should get a good idea of what the organization can expect from him moving forward.

Data via: Evolving Hockey

Photo Credit: Steve Babineau/NHLI via Getty Images