We can now comfortably say that another season of Buffalo Sabres hockey is in the history books. Last week, NHLPA executive committee voted to allow the NHL Return to Play proposal of a 24-team playoff for the resumption of the 2019-20 season to move forward. There are still some hoops to jump through and we likely won’t see hockey until mid-July at the earliest. However, you can start to see a dim light at the end of the tunnel.

For the Sabres, however, their season remains in the dark. They will be one of seven teams that will not be participating in action when play returns. They finished 25th in the league and two points away from unbelievably having some kind of playoff hockey in this new format. The Montreal Canadiens earned the last spot in the Eastern Conference with a .500 points percentage and the Sabres finished with .493.

One win. You can point to so many things that went wrong this season that could have been the one win difference in the team returning to hockey. Instead, they’ll have to sit around for roughly nine months to play a game again.

So, let’s look back on the 2019-20 season. See where the team as a whole improved and where they came up short in another disappointing season.

5 on 5 Performance

For years now, the Sabres have struggled at 5 on 5. This season was no different for the most part. They finished the season ranked 21st in goals scored per 60 minutes, according to Evolving Hockey. That’s the same spot they finished in last season and their goals per 60 were essentially flat at 2.29 this season against 2.27 in 2018-19.

After last year it would be impressive if the Sabres finished lower in shot quality at 5 on 5 compared to league. Well, they impressed and did just that. This area of the game was one of their main problems throughout the season. They never generated enough quality offense all season. Thankfully, due to the all-time bad season from the Detroit Red Wings, the Sabres finished 30th in shot quality (xGF/60) with a 2.05 rating. By the way, nobody has performed that poorly in that metric since the 2017-18 season according to the twins’ site when the Sabres put up a 1.93 in Jason Botterill’s first season.

The chart above gives you an idea of where the Sabres performed in scoring against the rest of the league at 5 on 5. The red bars measure the shot quality (xGF/60) and the black dots indicate the actual goals scored. This allows you to see which teams under or overperformed expectation regarding scoring.

At the other end of the rink, the Sabres were one of the better teams in the league defensively. They were a top 10 shot suppression team in the NHL. They finished 10th in shot quality against (xGA/60) and 8th in shot attempts against (CA/60), according to Evolving Hockey. Both of those categories were an improvement over last season.

This area is one feather that Ralph Krueger can put into his cap after this season. His system improved the club defensively, but an argument could be made that it did come at the cost of some offensive output. We’ll save that for later. Overall, you can say the Sabres showed progress defensively but showed some concerning regression in their offensive output year over year.

All Situations

When you add the special teams into the mix the Sabres did slightly improve in most areas year over year, except for their shot quality.

The part I want to emphasize here is the defensive numbers; goals against, and expected goals against. The reason is that it shows the damage that a poor penalty kill did to the Sabres this season. Above I pointed out how the Sabres were a top 10 defensive club at 5 on 5 and they improved from 27th to 9th in goals against.

However, in all situations data they only improved from 24th to 21st in goals against and from 19th to 15th in shot quality against. I recently wrote about the Sabres penalty kill on this site and when you look at the data it’s eye-opening to see how much that unit hurt this team. It cost them points in multiple games and when we’re talking about missing this 24-team playoff by two, it’s a problem that management needs to take a long look at.

Coaching and Roster Management

I was intrigued to see what new head coach Ralph Krueger brought to the Sabres this season. Coming from Southampton, a number driven soccer club in the Premier League, I hoped to see signs of that type of thinking throughout the season. Well, that didn’t happen.

Kruger’s first year behind the Sabres bench was a roller coaster ride. Early in the season he was trying out some different strategies that appeared to be working and then he got away from it as the year went on.

The most frustrating thing to watch unfold was the system that clipped the wings of the transition heavy defense group that Botterill put together in the offseason. I won’t get into the details here, but you can read about that here if you missed it a few weeks ago.

You can throw that on the pile with the poor penalty kill and overall player usage. He overused players like Rasmus Ristolainen and failed to properly utilize his $9 million winger in Jeff Skinner.

The overall usage of the players on the blue line can be another thing to point to that reflects poorly on both Krueger and Botterill. Colin Miller found himself in the press box far too often and Zach Bogosian was inserted into the lineup in his place. Speaking of one win being the difference in a “playoff” team this year, Bogosian cost this team multiple points as well when he had no business playing in the NHL.

Botterill’s unwillingness to move anyone off the roster also resulted in arguably the Sabres second-best left-handed defenseman, Lawrence Pilut, playing the majority of the season in the AHL. The only defenseman that he did move was one of the better performing players on the team in Marco Scandella for a fourth-round pick. Then he was embarrassed about a month later when the Montreal Canadiens flipped him to the St. Louis Blues at the trade deadline for a second and fourth-round pick.

For the second straight season, Botterill also abandoned his team in-season when they were struggling offensively. He acquired a few forwards, but none of the significant impact variety. Micahel Frolik was acquired in January but provided little offensively. According to Evolving Hockey’s standing points above replacement model (SPAR), he had a rating of -1.1.

His other two acquisitions in Wayne Simmonds and Domink Kahun only played a handful of games with the team since they were acquired at the deadline. The season was suspended just a few weeks later. At that point the Sabres were 12 points out of the regular playoff picture with 20 games to play.

Conclusion

The Sabres were on pace for their best point total under Botterill with 80. Previous point totals of 76 and 62 didn’t have the bar set that high. An 80-point season leaves the Sabres well short being involved in a playoff race and another finish in the bottom 10 of the league.

It’s another failed season to go on the shelf and a ninth straight season without a playoff appearance, the longest drought in the NHL. Someone in the hockey department should be held accountable for years of failure with minimal growth. The Sabres are no closer to a playoff team now than they were when Botterill took over.

Yet, it looks as though he’ll be in charge again to run an important offseason for the organization.

Data via: Evolving Hockey