Jason Botterill walked out of the last offseason with a few new defensemen that were known for their ability to transition the puck from defense to offense. The Buffalo Sabres general manager talked about bringing in players with those skillsets to improve his team’s ability to exit the zone and improve the transition offense.

However, I noticed early on in the season that the Sabres defensemen appeared to be playing in a system under Ralph Krueger that restricted their ability to carry the puck through the neutral zone. Defenders would exit the zone with speed and control. Then once they got to the red line they would dump the puck into the offensive zone instead of continuing to enter with possession.

I wondered throughout the season how the Sabres compared against the rest of the league in terms of controlled entries and dump-ins from defensemen. I never had the opportunity to look into it throughout the season, but some recent posts yesterday from Corey Sznajder finally sent me down the path to exploring this situation.

Tracking Data

One such chart that Corey put together with his tracking data was one that determines which players were good in transition offense. It looks at shot assists from the neutral and defensive zone on the y-axis and controlled entries on the x-axis.

The chart above gives us our first indication that the Sabres defense did not contribute often on the rush last season in the games Corey tracked. They were all well below league average in controlled entries and only two defensemen (Colin Miller and Henri Jokiharju) were better than slightly above average in shot assists.

Then I decided to look at the visualization on strictly zone entries for the defensemen.

Again, only Brandon Montour is showing above league average in entry attempts per 60 minutes, but three defensemen were above average in carry-in percentage. At the very least here my observation is being backed up by the data, but I want to know overall as a team how they line up against the rest of the league.

For that, I went into Corey’s raw data that breaks it down by player. I started by looking at zone-entries per 60 minutes among all defensemen in the data by team to see where the Sabres ended up.

As you can see in the chart above, they ranked 30th in the league in carry-ins by defensemen per 60 minutes. Thus confirming that the system they play under Krueger did not have defenders carrying the puck into the zone often.

The next thing I wanted to tackle were the dump-ins. Let’s see how often they went that route.

Again, to no surprise they had the highest percentage of entries via dump-ins in the NHL at 68%. In most cases, a dump-in just gives possession back to the opponent and reduces the opportunity to score. Eric Tulsky put together a study on how controlled entries lead to more goals. 

You can make an argument for utilizing this strategy of dumping the puck in if the team was successful in recoveries. Corey’s data does have them ranked 13th in recovery percentage. The problem with that is even being in the top half of the league, they only recover 33% of the dump-ins by defensemen. Meaning 67% of the time they give the puck back to the opponent. 

Disconnect

Tying this all back in, we have another example of a disconnect between the head coach and general manager. Botterill went out to acquire good transition defenders, yet the coach puts a system in place that clips their wings.

Remember when Rasmus Dahlin got off to a tough start? The coaching staff wanted him to focus more on defense at the cost of potentially declining his offensive impact. 

“He’s working hard on improving on the defensive side. It’s going to take away some of his offensive production,” said Kruger back in November on WGR550. 

How often this season did we see a rush like the one below? 

Rasmus Dahlin is a Wizard. This was nothing spectacular per se except it was. He will just hold the puck forever and nobody can approach taking it from him pic.twitter.com/NydYozPhxj

— Chief (@BarstoolChief) December 12, 2018

In Corey’s data, he had a carry-in per 60 minutes rate of 3.5 and a carry-in percentage of 55% in his rookie year. This season, the carry-in rate per 60 minutes dropped to 2.56 and a carry-in percentage of 34%. 

I’m sure the story is the same for all of the defensemen across the board. You can just throw this on the list of a handful of other things that indicate some sort of disconnect on the roster. If you want it, here are a few more examples:

• Jeff Skinner’s usage in almost all situations.
• Sam Reinhart never getting to be on his own line.
• Colin Miller scratched for Zach Bogosian.  
• Lawrence Pilut being sent out for a western road trip and playing one game.
• Wayne Simmonds not getting a look on the struggling power play.

It’s confusing and at the same time maddening to see these types of problems come up continuously. It’s almost as if Botterill went out and acquired the defensemen that Phil Housley needed for his system last year. Appearing as though he was unaware of what Krueger planned to do this season. 

The Sabres put together one of the worst offensive shot quality seasons over the past few years and part of that is because of the plan to reduce defensemen transitioning into the offensive zone with possession. 

Data via Corey Sznajder