Among the Buffalo Sabres’ many pleasant surprises this season, Kale Clague’s performance has stood out. The Sabres’ defense has largely struggled through the team’s first 32 games, but the 24-year-old has provided competent play amid multiple waves of injuries on the back end.

He’s performed so admirably that many fans feel he’s earned a permanent role in the Sabres’ defensive rotation. Though he was initially acquired to be a veteran body for the Rochester Americans, he’s making a strong case to remain with the big club.

By most accounts, Clague is passing the eyeball test. He’s been unspectacular yet reliable in his 12-game stint. The underlying metrics corroborate that conclusion to a degree, but there is the context that needs to be applied (as is typically the case).

Let’s take a look at Clague’s underlying impacts, and how the Sabres should aim to utilize him moving forward.

Pre-Sabres Struggles

Clague’s first four years in the NHL (mostly sporadic call-ups) were uninspiring, to say the least. In 58 career games with the Los Angeles Kings from 2019-to-2022, his underlying numbers were abysmal. During that stretch, he ranked dead-last among Kings defenders in terms of xGF/60 (41.23% at five-on-five), and his zero-percentile WAR ranking spoke for itself.

As a former second-round pick, Clague was once a highly-touted prospect. His AHL career was solid but uninspiring, and he was never really able to earn an extended look with Los Angeles. During the handful of opportunities he did receive, he just couldn’t find any sort of groove in the Kings’ system.

Early struggles aren’t always a reason to give up on a player, particularly a young defenseman, but nothing about his transition to the NHL inspired confidence. It’s part of the reason he entered the year as the Sabres 8-10^th defenseman on the depth chart.

Fortunately for him, his time in Rochester was short-lived, as a wave of defensive injuries struck the Sabres early in the 2022-23 season (and continues to an extent today).

Instant Chemistry with Power

While Henri Jokiharju spent 11 games sidelined with a lower-body injury, Clague subbed into his usual spot alongside Owen Power on the Sabres’ de facto second-pairing. Their cohesion as a duo took no time at all to develop. Through 83:34 minutes as a pairing this year, they hold an xGF rate of 58.43%.

Clague’s performance in such a critical role has helped soften the blow for a team that has lost a total of 46 man-games (and counting) due to injury on defense this season. This isn’t necessarily unique, as Power has thrived with all of his most common partners this year, but given the circumstances, their particular degree of success is noteworthy.

It’s not all sunshine and roses, however. Now that Jokiharju has returned to the lineup (and reassumed his place alongside Power), the Sabres are learning a bit more about Clague’s usage limitations alongside various defensive partners.

Power-less Performance

While Clague hasn’t experienced the same enormity of success sans Power, the returns have been far from detrimental. His second-most common pairing mate this year has been Rasmus Dahlin. Though the sample is small relative to Clague’s time with Power, the results were generally comparable.

So, we know that Clague can provide competence alongside high-end play-driving partners. That might not sound difficult per se, but it’s not an easy thing either. Partners of that caliber can help shelter pairing mates to a degree, but there are additional deployment and TOI demands in those scenarios too. The fact that Clague has proven up to that task shouldn’t be taken for granted.

What about everyone else? As we know, the Sabres are not a deep team defensively, even when they’re fully healthy. With that in mind, we should then ask whether or not Clague’s presence did anything to provide an underlying boost for an otherwise struggling partner.

The answer to that inquiry is a bit of a mixed bag. To preface, Clague’s samples sans Power and/or Dahlin are fractured and small, and therefore tougher to analyze. That said, there is something of a trend as it pertains to usage versus role.

In total, Clague has played 76 even-strength minutes without one of Power or Dahlin at his side. In that time, his on-ice xGF rate is 43.45%. That’s a significant downturn, and part of the reason he’s being punished to a degree in his RAPM metrics (relative to his raw xGF numbers which, as previously mentioned, are strong).

If you were just looking at the xGF WOWY delta, it would be easy to assume that Dahlin and Power were “carrying” Clague to success. By my assessment, said assumption would be largely inaccurate. At the very least, it isn’t that black-and-white of a conclusion.

For starters, the inability to propel the likes of Jacob Bryson, Casey Fitzgerald, and Ilya Lyubushkin to positive analytics outcomes is not unique to Clague. Further, Clague’s numbers with the rest of the Sabres’ depth defensemen are largely better than average.

That’s not to say the results are “good”, but there is evidence to suggest that Clague’s poor numbers sans Power and Dahlin aren’t “his fault” per se. Again, the individual pairing samples here are extremely small, and the analytics community should shun me for citing WOWY here. Still, it does paint a picture as to how Don Granato could optimize Clague, a player who certainly seems like one of the best six defensemen on the roster.

Optimal Deployment

So, what’s the next move? Granato isn’t going to separate Dahlin and Mattias Samuelsson on the top-pairing (nor should he), and Jokiharju seems to be a permanent fixture next to Power (as evidenced by his return to that spot despite Clague’s success there).

One thing I wanted to “rule out” in determining optimal deployment was the existence (or lack thereof) of a physical workload issue. In reviewing the in-game data, there were instances where Clague ranged anywhere from 20 minutes at even strength to as few as 12 minutes. His relative xGF marks in his sample of game appearances didn’t seem to correlate with increased or decreased TOI usage.

The answer is probably simpler than that. Clague is good enough to hang with a high-end partner, but not quite good enough to elevate a fringe-caliber NHLer. That leaves the Sabres with two logical choices. Either reshuffle the pairings in a significant way to ensure Clague plays on one of the de facto top-two pairings, or place him with a similarly-talented player on the bottom pairing.

The former seems unlikely, and somewhat illogical. Granato has two pairings that he knows can work consistently in Samuelsson-Dahlin and Power-Jokiharju. What he doesn’t have (and frankly hasn’t had all year) is a reliable third-pairing.

This is where I’d like to see the coaching staff try placing him with Lawrence Pilut for a few games. Fans seem to have mixed feelings about Pilut, but he’s played well in spot duty this year. He’s the only player to get positive results out of Lyubishkin, and he’s only struggled alongside struggling pairing mates.

Sound familiar?

Further, Pilut and Clague have the makings of a complimentary pairing. As outlined in an article I wrote about Pilut last month, he’s a very conservative defender. He doesn’t join the offensive rush very often, and he rarely finds himself out of position on the counter-rush.

Clague on the other hand likes to carry the puck and join the offensive effort to a degree. In a way, Clague is providing what the organization hoped they would get out of Jacob Bryson in terms of skillset (and subsequent results with said skillset).

This idea is conceptual and somewhat speculative. These two have only spent five even-strength minutes together this year (they did dominate the xGF share in those 5-6 shifts, but it’s a drop in the bucket). There is no historical partnership data to back it up, but on paper, there is a potential fit.

With the way the Sabres’ defense is currently constructed (when healthy), Granato just needs a third-pairing that isn’t going to get throttled when they’re on the ice. In reality, he doesn’t even need to use them all that much. 10-12 even-strength minutes per game would get them by.

There is reason to believe both players would thrive in that role. Limited minutes alongside a partner whom neither player needs to really “worry about”. It’s at least worth a look rather than constantly marching Fitzgerald (a player who ranks dead-last on the team with an xGF rate of 42.27%) or Bryson (or… *gulps*… both of them) out there to get shellacked every night.

Charts courtesy of Hockeyviz, JFresh Hockey and Evolving Hockey

Advanced Data courtesy of Evolving Hockey and Natural Stat Trick

Photo Credit: Joe Hrycych/NHLI via Getty Images