It’s no secret that the Buffalo Sabres’ inability to score has sat at the top of their list of problems for the better part of a decade. While Jason Botterill has made modest defensive improvements during his three-year tenure as general manager, those additions haven’t been nearly enough to offset the offensive black hole that exists beyond his team’s top-line.

For someone who took a sledgehammer to the load-bearing wall that was Ryan O’Reilly’s presence on the second line, his lack of urgency to address the subsequent negative scoring delta is head-scratching. Whether or not that decision came from ownership is irrelevant. Following a deal of that nature, prioritizing the collection of a dozen NHL-caliber defenseman (several of whom would be considered fringe-level) was bizarre, and frankly, unacceptable. 

The O’Reilly deal took place two seasons ago, but very little effort (if any) has been made to fill the gap. As a result, the Sabres continue to be one of the league’s least-effective groups on offense. No amount of middle-pairing blueliners will resolve that problem. 

During Phil Housley’s two years behind the bench, the Sabres held the fifth-worst even-strength xGF rate in the league at 47.28-percent. This season under Ralph Krueger, the defensive renovations didn’t do much to help offset the delta as the team finished with an xGF-percentage of 47.56. Though it’s tough to imagine, the Sabres offense was at least equally ineffective in 2019-20 as they had been under Housley. 

This season, the Sabres averaged 2.82 goals-per-game. In 2018-19 (Housley’s year without O’Reilly), they averaged 2.75. That could lead one to believe that a very modest improvement had taken place, but an examination of the respective season’s PDO metrics tell another story. 

In 2018-19, the Sabres had one of the worst PDO marks in the league at .987 (tied for third-lowest). This year, their PDO metrics were closer to average at 1.004. Extrapolated over an 82-game season (given the indefinite suspension of the 2019-20 regular season), Buffalo had an xGF mark of 133.49 at even-strength. During Housley’s final season with the team, that same mark stood at 143.26.

The PDO delta explains at least some part of the gap between actual and expected goal-production between those two seasons. So, what was the difference between Housley and Krueger’s respective approaches on offense?

It’s actually pretty simple, and the metrics match nicely with the “eyeball test”. Housley’s team from 2018-19 had more of a free-wheeling concept, the extent to which is evidenced by the shot-share numbers. Though they gave up more opportunities overall, they also produced more of their own. The problem this season was that while Krueger’s squad did shore-up the level of shot opportunities-against, they actually created a larger negative shot-share gap by creating so few shot attempts-for.

(For viewing reference, the 2019-20 season is partially hidden by the 2007-08 logo below)

Being careful not to defend Hosuley and Krueger (two demonstrably bad lineup optimization tacticians), the lack of improvement with largely the same year-over-year roster from 2018-2020 isn’t all that surprising. Sure, it’s tough to imagine a greater scale of offensive ineptitude than what we saw under Housley, but when Marcus Johansson and Jimmy Vesey are your only offseason additions at forward, a net-positive offensive impact was never expected to take place (at least not to any significant extent).

One area that did see a slim improvement was overall shot-quality. Under Housley, the Sabres finished dead-last in the NHL in quality-per-shot-for. This season, they improved the third-last in that area, registering a QPSF rate of .0529. Interestingly enough, there was wasn’t much of a change in their QPSA rate either, though that too experienced modest improvement.

This is where Botterill’s body of work fails to justify his return for a fourth year at the helm. Even if you assume the O’Reilly deal was not his doing, his track record outside of that deal is still pretty rough. Beside the Henri Jokiharju and Colin Miller (if his coach would actually play him consistently) additions on the blue line, he’s obtained a bag of magic beans in Brandon Montour, and kept a death-grip on a depreciating asset in Rasmus Ristolainen.

Not only has he ignored the forward group for the most part, but he’s batting around .250 (if we’re being generous) on the handful of additions he has made. His shortcomings as an offensive evaluator not only stem back to the Vesey and Michael Frolik acquisitions but also his shortsighted decision to sign Sam Reinhart to a “prove it” deal (which he’ll end up paying for this summer).

The importance of the upcoming offseason has been discussed ad nauseam, but if Botterill is indeed calling the shots (which looks more and more likely to be the case with each passing day), he needs to be very active, and display a level of asset evaluation we have seldom seen during his tenure.

At the very least, if the Sabres are finally going to contend for that ever-elusive postseason birth in 2020-21, the acquisition of offensive reinforcements needs to be Botterill’s top priority. The last time Buffalo posted a positive xG share was during the 2010-11 season. It’s not a coincidence that it’s also the last time they qualified for the playoffs.

xG and Shot Rate Charts courtesy of Charting Hockey

Even-Strength, Year-Over-Year xGF metrics courtesy of Natural Stat Trick