There’s no getting around it – the 2019-20 cmpaign was a down year for Jeff Skinner. One season removed from scoring 40-goals and subsequently signing an eight-year $72 million extension with the Buffalo Sabres, the now 28-year-old winger posted career-lows in both goals (14), and total points (23).

The good news is that this season was an outlier year for him from a base production standpoint. Better yet, his advanced statistics indicate that he probably contributed more than his base stats indicate. That’s not to say that his impact was necessarily what you would like to see from a player making $9 million per season, but the idea that the Sabres should have buyers remorse is premature.

Skinner’s year-over-year deployment between Phil Houlsey and Ralph Krueger was obviously quite different. In 2018-19, he spent nearly the entire season affixed to Jack Eichel’s left side. This past season, he spent very little time with Eichel and instead flanked Marcus Johansson, a converted winger, for the majority of the year.

In his end-of-the-season interview last week, Skinner said he didn’t feel that being away from Eichel had a huge impact on him. Even for the league’s elite wingers, a talent decrease at center like Skinner saw last season is almost always going to come with some degree of negative impact.

Heading into next season, a two-part question must be answered. For one, the Sabres must determine just how much Skinner’s game actually fell-off versus expectation. Then, they must decide what they can do to better optimize him moving forward.

First, let’s assess just how big of a gap existed between his base, and expected production. One of the things that jumps out this season in comparison to last, is zone-deployment. Under Housley, Skinner held an OZS rate of nearly 76-percent. Krueger took a vastly different approach, starting him in the offensive zone only 55.87-percent of the time. That ratio was his lowest since the 2012-13 season with the Carolina Hurricanes.

It’s important to note that this style of deployment has worked to an extent for Skinner in the past. In 2010-11 and 2011-12, he had a similar OZS rate and actually posted two of the highest relative xG marks of his career (until he arrived in Buffalo, of course). From 2013-on however, his OZS rate had ranged from 62 to 76-percent before Krueger took over.

Balancing Skinner’s OZS rate can work in principle, but Krueger probably went about it the wrong way. With Johansson and Conor Sheary as his primary linemates, the complementary skill sets weren’t exactly there for that type of usage, especially with how poorly Johansson performed as a pivot.

For that approach to work, Skinner would need to flank a two-way possession forward like Johan Larsson. In fact, Krueger did try a Skinner-Larsson-Sheary combination for a brief stint, and the three of them performed quite well. In just over 54 minutes of five-on-five action, they posted an xGF percentage of 66.55-percent. They even did it with an OZS rate of just over 45-percent.

That sample is too small to draw a concrete conclusion from, but it’s curious why Krueger broke them up after those few games of immediate, significant success. Skinner also fit nicely with defensively-inclined centers like Derek Ryan in Carolina. That being said, when he played alongside Ryan, the two of them had an OZS rate of nearly 70-percent, so in that regard, it’s tough to compare the situations. The Sabres are low on two-way centers as it is, and they really aren’t set up to put their only one in an offensively-tilted usage.

Moving away from deployment, Skinner’s shooting metrics also tell an interesting story. In 2018-19, Skinner was one of the most efficient shooters on the team. His expected-goal total was a whopping 31.91, which he outperformed with 40 on the year.

This season, you can see the net-front concentration was significantly reduced. Not only did his expected-goal total drop to just over 16 (extrapolated over an 82-game season, that expected total would have stood around 22), which he failed to reach. His average shot distance increased by more than a foot, while his shooting-percentage and total shots off rebounds both saw a reduction.

Again, this likely has something to do with the quality of his linemates, and the aforementioned 20-percent drop in year-over-year OZS rate.

It’s also important to note that his power-play time was reduced by 106 minutes. On top of that, a lot of his minutes were with the second-unit, which was extraordinarily futile as a group. In 2018-19 he tallied eight of his goals on the man-advantage (20-percent of his season total). This past season, he didn’t have any.

As a player, Skinner’s efficiencies come in the form of his offensive-zone possession ability, and his positional strength as a shooter. Without the proper linemates, it would have been a stretch to expect him to keep that same level of efficiency while also being deployed in a far less offensive-zone heavy ratio. Again, in order for something like that to work, you need players who complement those abilities.

Encouragingly, despite the more-than 6-point xG-rate dropoff that occurred this season, Skinner was still a net-positive for the Sabres at 1.36-percent. Though his defensive shortcomings are well-known, he’s always been able to create more opportunities than he allows. That trend has been pretty consistent throughout his career. If they can get him back into a usage style that has worked with a degree of regularity in the past, we should see him re-attain the statistical production he’s capable of.

Let’s now take a look at how Krueger should adjust Skinner’s usage moving forward. As we mentioned above, a defensively responsible centerman like Larsson would be a fit if the coaching staff is dead-set on keeping his zone-start rate relatively even. If the keep Johansson on the wing, his zone-transition ability (something neither Skinner, or Larsson for that matter, are particularly strong at) would actually work nicely on that right side and give the Sabres a well-rounded trio.

This, of course, would require Jason Botterill to not only retain Larsson, but for the coaching staff to be willing to move him off the de facto “shutdown line”. A move back to the top line alongside Eichel might be the more palatable (and realistic) approach.

At the end of the day, you have a $9 million asset who was removed from what he does best. Obviously, Eichel didn’t miss a beat transitioning from Skinner to Victor Olofsson on his left side, but unless the Sabres finally address their gaping hole at second-line center, or are willing to move Larsson away from the infamous “LOG Line” style of deployment he’s handled over the past two years, the options are slim.

Something that shouldn’t get lost in all of this is that part of the onus does fall on Skinner. While he was nowhere near “bad” last season, as the second-highest-paid player on the team, the Sabres needed more from him. That’s part of what happens when you pay someone big money, then subsequently move him away from the first elite centerman he’s ever played with. Still, he’s been able to find production alongside lackluster linemates in the past (see nearly every season in Carolina), and hopefully, he can regain some of his 2018-19 mojo next season.