The goaltenders. Easily the most talked about topic among Buffalo Sabres fans and media. As of July 13th, it seems like the plan for Kevyn Adams is to rely on some combination of Devon Levi, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, and Eric Comrie to guide his team to the playoffs next season.

Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising part of that plan is relying on a 21-year-old with seven games of NHL experience in Levi. It doesn’t sound like they want to ease him in next season. Sitting here today, he’s slated to be their number-one goaltender and play over 40 games.

If that works and yields positive results; it’ll be one of the most unprecedented things we’ve seen in the last 10 years.

Goaltender Age Data

Let me start this out by saying I’m a big fan of Levi. I think he’s going to be their guy in the crease for the next decade. What I don’t agree with, is placing the pressure of having a team ready to take that next step relying on an inexperienced player his age to carry the load.

Levi will start next season at 21 years old. Only one goaltender in the last 10 years has played more than 32 games in a season when they started the season 21 or younger.

That one player was Carter Hart.

There are a total of 42 occurrences in the last 10 years that have played at least a game in the NHL at 21 or younger. There are a few goaltenders in there that did it multiple times. There are only 11 occurrences of those players in that age range playing 20 games or more. Of those 11, only three of them have posted a positive goals saved above expected in all situations, according to Evolving Hockey’s model. Those three were Juuse Saros (2016-17), Joonas Korpisalo (2015-16), and Hart (2019-20).

The overall performance for this age group over the last 10 years is not great. You’ll see in the chart below that all three age groups averaged below expected. The other thing to note here is the average number of games played for each age group.

I wanted to narrow my focus to see if there was a trend over the last five years of players his age playing more and putting up better results. A lot of things have changed in the league and this could have been one of them. I also wanted to start to focus on just goaltenders that played in their age 21 season.

The chart below shows the goaltenders that played in the NHL during that age. Only five of them returned results above expected. Four of those five players appeared in 12 games or less. Hart was the only standout, playing in 43 games.

Let’s slice this another way and mix up our grouping to see if we can get some better results. I pulled rookie goaltenders the last five years that were 23 years old or younger.

As you can see above, it’s more of the same. There is an interesting jump that players seem to have between their 21 and 22 seasons. Perhaps that’s the sweet spot for a goaltender to enter the league. I’ll leave that for someone else to dig into.

Again, there are only four instances where a goaltender played 23 or more games in this group and had positive results. All of them were also 22 or older. Stuart Skinner was the only one to do it playing over 35 games last season for the Edmonton Oilers. For full context, last year was Skinner’s fifth season as a pro.

College Goaltenders

One of the arguments why Levi could be different is because of the way he performed in college hockey. He was a two-time Richter Award winner as the best goaltender in the NCAA. He had a great collegiate career.

Here’s the thing though, he’s not the only one to have an excellent collegiate career and jump to the NHL. Let’s see how some of those players did.

I went and pulled the data on the first two years of NHL play from Evolving Hockey on a few recent college standouts. Those players were Connor Hellebuyck, Jeremy Swayman, Spencer Knight, Jake Oettinger, Thatcher Demko, Matt Murray, and Calvin Petersen.

As you can see above, only three of them produced above-expected numbers and played more than 25 games in one of their first two NHL seasons. Hellebuyck did it in his first season, playing 27 games. Murray and Oettinger did it in their second seasons.

Oettinger’s first season in the NHL, at 21 years old, he played 30 games with a -2.14 goals saved above expected rating in the twins’ model. Knight is another goalie we can look at as a reference for Levi. He played 32 games in his first full NHL season at 20 years old. His results were a -1.72 goals saved above expected.

This feels like the sweet spot for Levi next season. Realistically, if he’s around even in goals saved above expected or slightly above that should be looked at as a win. To put that into the context of his ranking in the league if he put up those numbers. He would have ranked 32nd in EH’s model among goalies to play at least 1,000 minutes. That’s a better performance than they received last season outside of the 26 games Craig Anderson played. Would it be enough though?

The other thing to consider is that Levi has never played more than 34 games in his collegiate career. In the 2021-22 season, he played 32 games with a month break in the middle of it when he went to represent Canada in the Olympics.

Last year, he played 34 games for Northeastern. When you look at his save percentage, he started to trend down as the season went along. He put up under a .900 save percentage in December before the holiday break. After the break, he came out and finished the season strong. That could be a coincidence or a sign that he started to get tired.

Of course, he added another seven NHL games last season, but that came after another three-week break.

My point is that the jump from playing twice a week with minimal travel in the NCAA to the schedule and pace of the NHL game is drastically different. It seems like an unfair ask, to be honest, to have him play as much as they may want him to.

To put a bow on the Levi portion of this, there are two truths we can take out of this:

1. It’s rare for a player his age to play more than 30 games in a season.
2. Players his age more often than not put up below-average results.

It’s possible Levi can be the exception. Hockey is a crazy sport and the goaltending position has a lot of variability. It would be something to see him beat the odds.

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen

A lot of the focus when talking about the Sabres goaltenders is on Levi. Well, two others are in the picture. Let’s say that Levi plays at least 41 games. The player who is in line to play the majority of the other 41 games is Luukkonen.

This is where the plan starts to fall apart for me. Even if everything breaks your way on Levi. There’s still 45-50% season to account for with someone else between the pipes. The idea of giving Luukkonen that many games next season is a big risk, in my opinion.

I understand that he’s only 24. I get that he has had a few small stretches of good play in the NHL. However, he has played enough professional games in the AHL and NHL that we don’t need to narrow the window to make him seem better than he is.

In 69 AHL games, Luukkonen posted a .895 save percentage. In 46 NHL games, he has put up a -13.92 GSAx in Evolving Hockey’s model. Micah McCurdy’s model below shows similar NHL results for him.

I can understand the reluctance of some to give up on a goaltender after 115 pro games. My thought is that there has not been a good season from Luukkonen in the last three years. He posted good numbers in the ECHL during 23 games in the 2019-20 season, but his 10 AHL games were not good.

If Levi is the future in net, there shouldn’t be a concern to move on from Luukkonen. Go find something that you’re more likely to get better results with.

Eric Comrie

I’m not sure what to say about Comrie because I can’t see how he’s on the NHL roster if Luukkonen is still in Buffalo. It seems like Adams doesn’t want to go with three goaltenders again. They can’t do it over a full season.

They could waive him and he’d play in the AHL. That seemed reasonable until they signed Dustin Tokarksi and Devin Cooley to play for the Rochester Amerks. Perhaps he gets claimed on waivers and that is how things end for him with the Sabres.

I do sympathize with Comrie. He did have a handful of good performances last season when he was healthy. At the same time, there were a handful of very poor showings. It’s possible his injuries ruined his season. He was the best-performing goaltender outside of Levi since January in GSAx. I don’t think they can roll the dice on seeing if he can be what they thought he could be when they signed him.

Conclusion

If this is the group the Sabres go into camp with, I think that it’s a huge risk for Adams. His team is ready to go be a playoff team and if goaltending is what holds them back once again it’ll be a bad look for him. That goodwill he built up will start to evaporate quickly. Especially when the likely outcome was there for everyone to see before the season started.

On the other hand, I get him wanting to stick to his plan. It hasn’t let him down to this point. The young players on the roster have developed well. They’ve taken the steps necessary to get the team to where they are now. He may feel comfortable sticking with this approach. I may not agree with that approach at this point, but I respect it.

It could work or he’ll dance a little too close to the sun this time and get burned.

Data via: Evolving Hockey and Hockeyviz

Photo Credit: Mark Konezny-USA TODAY Sports