It’s not uncommon to find the Buffalo Sabres at the bottom of the 5 on 5 offensive shot quality (xGF) rankings. They’ve become a resident of the basement in that statistic and this season is no different. Going into tonight’s matchup against the New York Rangers they rank 26th in the league in shot quality for at 5 on 5 (score and venue adjusted), according to Evolving Hockey.

Usually, it’s a case of the Sabres being deficient in offensive talent that results in these poor numbers. This season, however, there’s a different reason.

If you watch any Sabres game this season, in particular the more recent games, you can tell this team can’t seamlessly transition with the puck to create offense. It also feels like they play a dump and chase game a lot that isn’t the most fun to watch.

I decided to go through Corey Sznajder’s tracking data to see if the microstats backed up what I believed was occurring during the games. The data confirmed some of the things that I mentioned above and it also debunked some other beliefs a lot of people share.

Dump and Chase Style?

It appears as though the Sabres prefer to play a dump and chase style to go along with their low-event system under Ralph Krueger. Teams that play that way are not the most fun to watch. We all love the up and down the ice, fast-paced game.

Well, it turns out the Sabres don’t play that style. In fact, they dump the puck in at a rate per 60 minutes at 5 on 5 that is near the bottom of the league.

You can see above that the Sabres are actually in the bottom five of the league in dump-ins per 60 minutes at 5 on 5. The other interesting part of this is that when they do dump it in, they recover the puck at the third-highest rate in the league in this dataset. That data point is shown by the light grey squares on the chart above.

The next question we need to answer now is: how often do they enter the zone with possession? The data may surprise you again.

The Sabres ranked ninth in the league in controlled entries into the offensive zone per 60 minutes at 5 on 5. In theory, this tracks with Taylor Hall, Jack Eichel, and Rasmus Dahlin all being some of the best transition players in the league. Having said that, it doesn’t completely track to the impression we’re having when watching the games.

The Real Transition Issue

I started to think about what could be feeding into what makes the Sabres look like a team that doesn’t enter the zone with possession often. The picture is about to become clearer for us on exactly what we’re seeing. Let’s get a look at the zone entry failure rate for the club.

As you can see in the chart above we’re onto something now. The Sabres have the sixth-highest failure rate in the league at 12.29%. What this means is that we’re seeing the team fail to enter the zone at a high rate which results in a turnover or them having to reload in the neutral zone. This lines up with what we’re watching and how sloppy they look in transitioning from defense to offense.

The main issue here for me is their inability to generate offense in transition. A lot of goals in this league are generated on the rush. It’s easier to score that way than against a set defensive formation.

You’ve probably seen me mention in other or articles or on Twitter that my focus this season is on what a player does after they enter the zone. Entering with control is good, but if you don’t anything with the puck it’s pointless. I’ve begun referring to them as empty-calorie entries. The Sabres have a lot of empty-calories entries.

The Sabres are 22nd in the league in scoring chances created off a controlled entry in Corey’s data.

You can see a correlation with the teams in the bottom 10 of the chart above when you look at the 5 on 5 shot quality rates and goals scored. The first ranking below will be xGF/60 for each team and the second number will be actual goals scored per 60 minutes.

• Red Wings: 29th | 28th
• Sabres: 26th | 31st
• Kings: 30th | 21st
• Stars: 28th | 29th
• Wild: 10th | 1st
• Ducks: 19th | 25th
• Coyotes: 20th | 26th
• Lightning: 8th | 6th
• Blackhawks: 18th | 23rd
• Sharks: 15th | 8th

Of these bottom-10 clubs, the Wild, Lightning, and to a slightly lesser extent the Sharks are the outlier clubs. The remainder of the teams are no higher than 18th in shot quality for and all in the bottom-10 of goal scoring at 5 on 5.

The chart above brings the controlled entries and scoring chances data together. The bar charts measure the controlled entries per 60 on the left axis and the red squares are the scoring chances per 60 on the right axis. Only the Chicago Blackhawks and Los Angeles Kings have lower scoring chances per 60 than the Sabres among the top 15 teams in controlled entries.

Let’s quickly look at a few empty-calorie entry video clips to bring this all together. In this first clip, you’ll see a zone entry on the rush by Dahlin and he quickly gets the puck across the ice to Riley Sheahan. However, due to a lack of support, he has to wait and it results in the puck being turned over on a pass attempt.

This next one is a rush play by Casey Mittelstadt. Enters the zone with the puck on a 3 on 2 count-attack. The play develops slowly and Mittelstadt skates into traffic in the middle of the ice. He loses the puck and Sheahan settles for a low-quality shot from the wall.

Conclusion

The Sabres’ inability to create any offense on the rush is hurting their ability to score at 5 on 5. Far too often they’re going up against set defense and set goaltenders. That’s why we’re seeing the point shots and attempts to score on screens or deflections.

This falls on both coaching and the players. The system may restrict players from joining the rush to provide support if they’re being coached to focus on defense. It also falls on the coach to have a transition game this sloppy and disjointed. Nothing moves quickly with this team, which tells me players are thinking too much.

At the same time, the passing needs to be better. These are NHL players and the coach shouldn’t have to teach passing. Cleaner passes in the neutral zone or after entering the zone would help this group start to correct this issue.

If they can’t correct their inability to generate offense on the rush the scoring for this team isn’t going to get that much better, regardless of how unlucky they’ve been.

Data via: Corey Sznajder and Evolving Hockey

John Crouch/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images