Although we officially have most of the details for the 2021 NHL season finalized, the Buffalo Sabres are still waiting on some clarity to finalize organizational plans. The position group that sits with the most uncertainty right now is the goaltenders.

As of now, they have five goaltenders under contract. If you need a refresher those players are Carter Hutton, Linus Ullmark, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Jonas Johansson, and Dustin Tokarski. This is going to be another odd season and teams are going to have to make adjustments on the fly.

The Sabres are part of the seven teams that were not part of the return to play last year, therefore, they can open training camp on December 31st. That gives the Sabres nine days to at the very least make a decision on a few goaltenders in the organization.

According to the new rules, the Sabres can only invite 36 skaters to training camp. However, there is no limit on the number of goaltenders a team can bring to camp. They could decide to bring in all five goaltenders, but is that what they want to do at this time?

NHL Tandem

The thing that we know for sure, at this point, is that Hutton and Ullmark will be the two goaltenders with the Sabres. We can debate if that’s a smart decision overall, but those are the two that will very likely be on the roster when camp opens.

It’s also not a stretch to say that Ullmark will be the goalie that gets the majority of the starts. Having said that, with the compact schedule that will follow a major league baseball model of a series against the same club, the Sabres will need to lean on both.

Hopefully, Hutton has his vision issue resolved and he’ll bounce back after a poor 2019-20 campaign.

Taxi Squad

Another one of the changes to this season will be the ability for clubs to carry a taxi squad. Roster sizes have been increased to allow for a four to six player taxi squad. They’ll be allowed to practice and travel with the club.

Each taxi squad must carry at least one goaltender. Thus, we enter our next question. Who is going to be that goalie?

The two options are Johansson and Tokarski. I jump to Tokarski as the one that will fill this role initially. His signing was mainly expansion driven anyways. That allows Johansson to play in the AHL if there’s a season. We’ll get to that in a moment.

While Tokarski seems like the obvious choice, he hasn’t played in an NHL game since the 2016-17 season when he appeared in one game in relief for a little over nine minutes. If one of the goaltenders on the main roster goes down, is Tokarski the one they want to step in?

Perhaps Johansson does make more sense as the taxi squad goalie. On the other hand, when he did play in the NHL last season it wasn’t a great showing. According to Evolving Hockey, he stopped -4.39 goals saved above expected and carried a -1.99 adjusted Fenwick (unblocked shots) save percentage (dFSv%) in six appearances.

The third option for the Sabres is bleak if it gets to that point either way. The question is if the organization wants Johansson in the AHL with Luukkoen or the veteran in Tokarski.

For what it’s worth, there hasn’t been an announcement of Johansson being recalled from his loan with the Krefeld Penguins of the German pro league DEL.

What to do with Luukkonen?

Speaking of Luukkonen, that brings us to our biggest question with the goaltenders. What do the Sabres do with their current heir apparent in goal? Luukkonen is currently playing for TPS in the Finnish pro league Liiga.

They’d like to get him back over to North America for a full AHL season, but there’s no guarantee we see that happen right now. That leaves the Sabres in a bit of a pickle. They could call him back over from Finland, but what does he do until the AHL season starts in February? What if there’s no AHL season?

The obvious solution would be to just leave him with TPS for the remainder of the year. He’s getting ice time and isn’t playing poorly. He currently ranks ninth in the league in save percentage (.906) with 12 appearances.

Where this gets muddy in Finland is that TPS recalled Rasmus Tirronen from his loan. That means that Luukkonen is now part of a three-headed goaltending group at TPS with Andrei Kareyev also on the roster.

That’s not an ideal situation to put your 21-year-old goaltender in. This will be something worth monitoring over the next few weeks. At this point, I don’t have an opinion on what the best approach would be. It’s a complicated situation that has pros and cons on both sides.

As of now, it appears the plan is for the Sabres to leave him in Finland until they get some clarity on the AHL season. There has been no announcement of his recall from TPS. If they intended for him to be over for training camp he would have needed to be in Buffalo already to complete his mandatory quarantine.

We’ll see how the goaltending situation plays out of the next few weeks heading into camp and then monitor the situation in the AHL thereafter.

Data via: Evolving Hockey

Photo Credit: Rochester Americans