Welcome to the 2024 xB Buffalo Sabres Draft Guide! For the 2024 edition, I took feedback from last year, and have broken this up into multiple parts so that it 1.) Can load on your mobile device and 2.) It can be consumed in various readings and doesn’t take an hour to get through.

If this is the first time you’ve read my draft guide, let me break down how each section will go:

– Each draft pick the Sabres have will be given five players which I think are reasonable selections for the Sabres. They are broken down as Dream Scenarios (two given for each draft pick), Realistic Selections (two given for each draft pick), and a Wildcard Selection (one given for each draft pick)

– Dream Scenarios are based on my evaluation of the player, and where I believe they are most likely going to go in the draft. They are based on my draft philosophies and don’t take into account my studying of the Sabres past draft philosophies nor the current needs of the team.

– Realistic Scenarios are based on where I believe players may go in the draft, and are based on studying the Sabres’ previous draft philosophies, current prospect pool depth needs, and players, that if I were a part of the Sabres draft team, I would be okay signing off on the selection.

– The Wildcard Scenario is a draft pick that doesn’t fall directly into the two categories above and is a player that I think would go slightly later than the current selection (or undrafted in the later rounds), but I believe it would make an interesting selection for the Sabres.

– First-time draft-eligible players will just have their names displayed in bold. Every asterisk after the player’s name will denote if they are a D+1 or D+2 draft-eligible player. For instance, Tanner Adams was eligible for the draft last year but was not drafted. He will appear in the draft guide as ‘Tanner Adams*”.

Last year this draft guide included Zach Benson in a Dream Scenario, Anton Wahlberg/Maxim Strbak in the Realistic Scenarios, and Gavin McCarthy in a Wildcard Scenario. Hopefully, this guide will get lucky again and provide insight to some of the players in the Sabres draft as they draft them. If not, then I encourage you to go to my draft rankings article to see if I had any notes about the player in that article before the recap article I will write.

Pick 108

Dream Scenario #1: Clarke Caswell, W/C, WHL

5’11, 176 lbs

68gp, 26g, 77pts

Clarke Caswell is a player who exemplifies details in his game. While he’s not undersized, Caswell makes sure to leverage every part of his 5’11 frame to protect and shield the puck and to proactively get position on larger players to then pivot to get the puck moving up the ice, facilitating zone play, or pivoting on his edges to make plays to dangerous parts of the ice.

The best part of Caswell’s game is his playmaking ability with his vision. He was one of the top passers in the dataset in terms of passing attempts and completing passes to dangerous parts of the ice. He attempted 24% of his passes to dangerous parts of the ice which put him inside the top 5 in North America within the dataset. His shot can beat goalies clean from medium distance but isn’t a trait I’d say is his greatest weapon.

If Caswell is going to develop into a steal in the 2024 draft it’s going to be dependent on him adding a little bit more speed and getting to the inside with the puck a bit more to become a dual threat. He’s good off-puck at finding space, but being able to get a step on a defender would make Caswell one of the few players at this point in the draft who could find himself in an NHL top-six at the peak of his NHL career.

Dream Scenario #2: Miguel Marques, RW, WHL

5’11, 172 lbs

67gp, 28g, 74pts

If Caswell is the definition of details, then Marques is the definition of tools over the process. Marques has impressive speed and agility to get create on his own. He pops off the screen when you put on a Lethbridge game given that his speed jumps out to you and his ability to maneuver through the neutral zone with the puck on his stick.

Marques started red-hot to begin the year and cooled off considerably as the year went on. Looking at his microstat profile it wasn’t surprising. He was in the top 10% of passing attempts per game while also being in the bottom 10% of forwards who attempted passes to dangerous areas of the ice. He is middle-of-the-pack in terms of dangerous shot attempts a game, but also in the bottom 10% of total shot attempts per game. There is a lot that has to be developed within the processing of getting the puck to areas of the ice that score goals, but also a lot to like in terms of the tool-kit that it’s a tantalizing development project to see if he can expand on that part of the game and end up being a 100 point player in the WHL in two years.

When you get to the mid-rounds, I tend to value players in the CHL who I think could use the full two years in the WHL to round out their game. Oftentimes, if a player outgrows the CHL league and is not ready to go to the NHL, the year spent in the CHL doesn’t help develop the processing skills to play against bigger, faster, and smarter players. Marques is a player that I think could use the full two years, and could end up jumping right into an impact player in the AHL when he graduates from the WHL.

Realistic Scenario #1: Javon Moore, LW, USHS-Minnesota

6’4, 203 lbs

28gp, 26g, 53pts

I’d rarely rank a high school player with little-to-no USHL game experience this high, but the skills that Javon Moore possesses makes me think he may not even be available this late in the draft. Moore is a player who is one of the tallest players in the draft and has the skill set of a player sub-6′. He has great speed and is very nimble on his edges. He doesn’t take extra steps and is very smooth changing directions, stopping and starting, and accelerates quickly for a player of his size.

He has very good puck skills and plays very well in getting around players in small areas. While he does use his reach to protect the puck, he also has the one-on-one ability to beat defenders with dekes, fakes, and putting defenders off balance with skating stop and starts and edgework. He hasn’t developed a true power-forward game yet that would utilize his size. He doesn’t put his shoulder down and barrel through defenders, nor does he use his physical frame to intimidate or outmuscle players to the degree that he should, especially at the high school level.

High school hockey is a ways away from the NHL. What Moore gets away with at this level he won’t be able to get away with next year at the University of Minnesota. Skipping over the traditional full-year in the USHL that happens with most good high school prospects is both a good and bad thing in my mind. It’s good because he will go right to the NCAA and could speed up the developmental learning curve for Moore to be an NHL prospect. I am hesitant because it could mean a full three years before Moore learns the details of the game that could see him sign his ELC. I’m never one to worry about players not signing from the NCAA, but Moore does scream the type of prospect who a team will be trying desperately his junior year to sign afterward, and Moore will have the option to go back for one more year and be a UFA. Everything is there for Moore to be a great steal in the mid-rounds, but can he catch up to learning the mental processing and fine details it will take to jump to the professional leagues will be the big question.

Realistic Scenario #2: Noah Powell*, RW, USHL

6’0, 201 lbs

61gp, 43g, 74pts

Noah Powell came onto my radar in early January and from that point on I became enamored with his ability to play as a power forward who also was one of the best playmakers in the USHL that I saw. His hat trick performance against the NTDP in a game I was tracking most of the NTDP players solidified himself as a player I would rank and a player I think I would take in the third or fourth round.

The hallmarks of Powell’s game are his physicality and his vision. While he broke the Dubuque goal-scoring record in a season this year, he could make his teammates better which impressed me. He is not dependent on rush transitions to create, and I thought he was best at pulling pucks off the boards and into the middle to then find teammates while drawing immense pressure on himself as he moved toward the center of the ice. He can protect the puck with his frame while scanning the ice to find a teammate, and given his low pace of play, reminded me of the older version of the NHL’s Jagr, but in the USHL, in how he was able to create plays without elite foot speed.

Powell will slip down into the mid-rounds because of his footspeed. He does not play at an NHL pace currently and that will be a cause of concern for NHL teams, especially as a player who broke out in the D+1 year. I think he’s a different kind of prospect that the Sabres could use in their depth pool who also gives them offensive upside that doesn’t pigeonhole him into a bottom-six-or-bust type of prospect that I typically avoid.

Wildcard Scenario: Max Plante, C/W, USNTDP

5’10, 170 lbs

51gp, 15g, 61pts

I thought the NTDP forwards fell into clear tiers for me this year, and while he is ranked right alongside Kamil Bednarik, I think Plante will be falling farther down the draft board than his counterpart. The NTDP is notorious for their prospects to have equal ice time throughout the year, which allows less of an opportunity for a player like Plante to put up gaudy microstats. He averaged just 11:30 of even-strength ice time this year in my viewings. Compare that to a player like Tij Iginla in the WHL who averaged 18:01 and you can understand why the opportunities might be larger for CHL prospects than the NTDP.

Plante is a chameleon player. What I mean by this is that he can be mixed and matched throughout the NTDP lineup and he will fit the role you need him to play. When he played with Eiserman he found himself as an off-puck offensive zone player who drove transition results and one-touched passes in the offensive zone. Ask him to drive a line the next game and he’s over 50% offensive transition involvement with a 79% success rate. His archetype was a “Put me in and I’ll figure out how to make an impact” type of player.

His microstat profile was very good given the limited ice time he received. He was over a 20% shot share with 75% of his shots coming from dangerous areas of the ice. He completed over 75% of his passes and 20% of them went to scoring areas of the ice. He was involved in 48% of offensive zone transitions for the NTDP and that included some games where he was not asked to do so. He was extremely defensively responsible given his frame, and like most NTDP players, the details of his game are advanced so that his passing vision and smarts make him a deadly offensive play-creator.

He’s going to have to fill out and hopefully get a little bit faster, but I think he’s the one NTDP forward outside of Eiserman and Stiga who could bring an offensive toolkit that could, one day, find himself on the powerplay.