My new longest-running NHL season-opening tradition.

We’ll start with the kind folks from the Discord server, which you can join anytime.

RC: With the point projections that have come out lately having us ranging from 75.6 (Evolving Hockey) to 86.4 (Hockeyviz), what should we be looking for to see what end of that spectrum we are headed towards? Are there any blind spots in the models that could hurt or benefit the Sabres’ final standings relative to the projections

The majority of the “go-to” projection models share a common blind spot: goalies. But that’s not to their fault; it comes with the goalie landscape and, of course, the voodoo.

Last season, Evolving Hockey projected the Sabres at 66.8 points with a 8.3 standard deviation. Their 75-point finish placed them at approximately the 84th percentile of possible outcomes. If they were to outperform that number again, with this season’s 75.6 mean and 8.1 standard deviation, that would put them around 83 points.

Similarly, last season, Micah had the Sabres at 79.1 points with an 8.5 standard deviation, which would place their 75 points around the 31st percentile of possible outcomes. If they were to outperform that number again, with this season’s 86.3 mean and 8.5 standard deviation, that would put them around 82 points.

An 82-83 point season would, as we have come accustomed to seeing, would give them their best point total since 2015-16, which would certainly be a pretty good jump for this group of Sabres to take and then make the next big jump into playoff contention for 2023-24. One piece that helps the Sabres with Micah’s projections is that he does more consulting on the prospect side with Hannah Stuart to get a more narrow sense of prospect outlooks for the upcoming season, so with guys like Power, Quinn, and Peterka playing their first full seasons with Pilut coming back to the NHL from the KHL, the expectation, as far as I’m concerned, should be closer to Micah’s model this season. Along with the optimism that the Sabres will not have the same injury misfortune and covid absences, ESPECIALLY in net, that’s enough to think that the team can outperform expectations again. Whether that’s low or high 80s, however, is still out there to be seen.

The Koz: Give me the 3 players who have the shortest leash to get their [Chautauqua County] right to start the season

Anders Bjork is probably first on this list as a formality. If Rochester guys start too hot to keep them down, he could still be a low-cost buyout candidate if there isn’t a trade partner on the other line. I’ll put Henri Jokiharju’s decline last season as a reason to put him next on the list. He is still young enough that he could continue to develop and right the ship, but with the struggles aligning with Granato’s tenure as the head coach, there is some skepticism towards that. He’ll still have a pretty long leash, however, unless Casey Fitzgerald performs substantially better and puts Jokiharju in the press box rotation.

I don’t think there is a definitive third person on this list. On a technicality, third would be Craig Anderson since he is going to get the larger weight of the split with Comrie early on, but for a 41-year-old goaltender, that’s not a roster spot on the line.

JC0nti: Which of the young players doesn’t make it in the new core, as in gone this year or next?

Honestly, I have a hard time seeing any of the young guys currently on the roster being on the hot seat or even trade piece candidates unless they go all in with a trade for a marquee star. The vets in the lineup will be the ones that age out to bring the next wave of draft picks up. I’d probably say Olofsson if he hadn’t signed a multiyear extension, but even he isn’t necessarily that young at this point.

Nickwid913: What defender on the roster do you think would pair the best with Owen Power? What are the Sabres’ best pairs?

Lines/pairs at practice:
Skinner-Thompson-Olofsson
Quinn-Mittelstadt-Tuch
Krebs-Cozens-Peterka
Girgensons-Asplund-Okposo
Bjork, Hinostroza rotated in.

Samuelsson-Dahlin
Power-Jokiharju
Bryson-Lyubushkin
Fitzgerald

— Lance Lysowski (@LLysowski) October 11, 2022

There isn’t anything egregious about the pairings they ran out at practice on Tuesday. Samuelsson and Dahlin seem to be something they hope to have as a pairing for the foreseeable future. Lyubushkin’s the kind of steadying partner to match with someone like Bryson. Power’s 8-game sample saw him register a 56.25 CF% and a 50.78 xGF% in 109:01 5v5 minutes with Jokiharju (per Natural Stat Trick). This was their 14th most-used pairing last season at 5v5. Those two together are probably the best way to start things out.

Matt1488: In 8 years, what deal will we think was better, Tage or Samuelsson?

Just because of the role he has as a number-one center for at least the next couple of seasons, it probably defaults to Tage.

Vlad: Who is the most realistic young-ish guy the Sabres can pursue next summer to signal the rebuild is over? (Slightly tongue in cheek reference to the ESPN broadcast last night saying the Senators’ off-season signals their rebuild may be over)

Phew, I was worried I was the only person who heard that and made this face 😑. Also, sigh, if only.

I think it’s too early in the cycle of the next season to have an idea as to who might be available, but the concept is concrete: Find a really good player who is looking for a change of scenery or is at a contract impasse with their current team, and generously volunteer to take said player of that team’s hands, as Robertson would’ve been. If everything goes to plan, they’ll be in a better position to get guys of the caliber of the Gaudreau or Tkachuk that were available this summer.

And onto Twitter

@NotOwenPower: What do you expect the start splits to be between the goalies? Realistically accounting for Comrie, Anderson, and UPL for this.

With no injuries, I think they’d ideally like a 60/40 Comrie/Anderson split, with it starting much closer to 50/50 in the fall. They seem very committed to a 60 or so game slate for UPL in Rochester, so I’ll say once injuries are considered and the like:

Eric Comrie	42
Craig Anderson	26
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen	9
Malcolm Subban	4
Michael Houser (For Anth, as a treat)	1

@DanielMaines13: If they were in a playoff spot come deadline time, do they make a deadline acquisition and who could it be?

I’m still intrigued by the idea of Erik Johnson, but I don’t think Colorado answers the phone with their expectations (which I will revisit in the summer when UFA season comes along). A 90-point pace probably has them looking to buy on the blue line, but the options may be limited because the the top pending UFAs mostly belong to teams that would want their services for their cup run.

@mrpotter: [Bulleting the list]

• When do the Sabres make the playoffs? In 2023-24 they’ll beat out Detroit for the second wild card spot in a 5 Atlantic, 3 Metro playoff (I hope).
• Can Tage repeat last season’s success? 35 goals would be my expectation this season, so yes I think so
• Will the Skinner contract be looked upon as a win for both sides when all is said and done? In the end, I think it would not be, but as we’ve seen with Okposo, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it would end up a failure. At a minimum, the contract is going to have three distinct “eras” of Sabres teams that make Skinner’s role on the roster so different from expectations.
• Who will solidify the goalie position for the next 5 years? Of the guys they have in the system right now, I think Comrie is the most likely to be a #1 in October 2027, with Levi the next most likely. I think UPL will be on a different team by then regardless of how he develops over the next couple of seasons just based on the numbers game.
• We know Donnie G. Loves meatballs, how does he feel about wings? The question that if you made it to this point is going to cause the greatest debate. I think Granato is either a bbq wing guy or one of those people who will eat the spiciest thing on a menu and look around at everyone like “What? I feel the spice but it’s not a hot feeling.” If someone can confirm, that would be greatly appreciated.

So that’s all for the mail. Let’s do some predicting:

Atlantic	Metro	Central	Pacific
Florida – East 1	Carolina	Colorado	Edmonton – West 1
Tampa Bay	New York Rangers	Minnesota	Vegas
Toronto	Pittsburgh	Dallas	Los Angeles
Boston – WC2	Washington – WC1	Nashville – WC1	Calgary
Ottawa	New Jersey	St. Louis – WC2	Vancouver
Detroit	New York Islanders	Winnipeg	Seattle
Buffalo – 83 points	Columbus	Arizona	Anaheim
Montreal	Philadelphia	Chicago	San Jose

Other thoughts

• The gap between the Atlantic Top 3 and the OTT/DET/BUF tier is going to be way more narrow than last year, but all of those teams have enough talent that it’s not going to make the playoff teams from the division different this season. Florida has the makeup of a president’s trophy team
• I think Toronto’s goaltending could get front-office people fired. “Goalies are voodoo” can only be repeated so many times over years before at some point you just need to go get a low-variance good goalie.
• OTT/DET/BUF will probably be within a handful of points; the order is arbitrary. They, New Jersey, and the Islanders are still not on the level to pass Washington and Boston for the WC.
• Colorado is too deep for the goalie change to drop them out of the top of the Central, but Minnesota should be there to keep them sweating it out into April.
• Jack Campbell isn’t a fire hose, but he will be enough to make the Oilers a lot steady in a weak division. As for the next handful of teams, as much as it would be nice to see Vegas miss the playoffs again, it’s just not a good enough division for that projection, which is why I think the central gets both wild card teams
• Seattle could make a jump this year if Grubauer bounces back and Beniers and Wright have little to no growing pains, but I’ll still put Calgary and Vancouver in front of them to represent that they’ll need to show us before that’s definitive.

Colorado over Tampa Bay. Let’s run it back until we find out otherwise that those two teams can be beaten in their conferences.

Data via: Evolving Hockey and Hockeyviz