I mean, yeah they were pretty deep at forward in hindsight but that d-core is pretty terrible which is probably one of the main reasons why they didn't make it.
Well no lol but at the same time their problem wasn’t starting a roster of young guys, it was not retaining these guys while they developed together. Obviously there’s nuance to that statement but when you’re building a team and fold your cards too early you’re never going to reach the cumulation of the players peak development.
Well that’s the failure of the organization. I think they invested too heavily in the wrong pieces and didn’t have a long-term strategy towards the growth and success of players outside of “wait and see.”
You trade some pieces and prospects for existing NHLers to build a more competitive roster with veteran presence but still led predominantly by young players
Same with goal tending. Ullmark had played a grand total of 21 NHL games at the time this roster sheet was compiled. This particular game was his only NHL start this season.
Edit: Realized this was one particular game sheet where he started, they weren't calling Ullmark the "Starting goalie" for this season.
Yep, that team finished near the bottom of the pack offensively. Evander Kane was their only forward with more than 25 goals and no one finished with 60 or more points.
It wasn't just ROR though. Numerous players have been outspoken about not enjoying their time on the Sabres in recent years, only to find success elsewhere. And more than one player has said there isn't a winning mentality on the team and too many guys are just content to be playing in the NHL. There is a culture that has developed with the team that needs to change.
The O'Reilly dui happened on july 13th 2015, he was traded to buffalo on June 26th. Dude literally got a DUI like 20 days after joining the sabers.
Should have been known then that it wasnt going to work out
Exactly. That’s why a complete burn down and return to relevancy is so hard. Even if you get the right guys, you have to be super, super, super patient.
I wouldn’t even say they were deep at forward, honestly. ROR/Eichel is a very good 1/2 at center, but Kane and Reinhart (who was like a 57 point player at the time, not a 57 goal scorer) are really the only players that are top 6 wingers on a playoff team. Ennis was a top 6 forward for like two years of his career, and Gionta was way past his prime at this point. Their bottom 6 is pretty much all 4th liners, Rodrigues wasn’t putting up the same offensive numbers he is today, and Moulson was absolutely not the same player he was with the Islanders (not sure if that was age or injuries or not playing with Tavares or some combo of the three). Deslauriers and Carrier are 4th line wingers, Nylander busted, and Girgensons, despite being known for the ASG vote, has always been a 20-30 point guy.
Yeah, even if you magically put every player in their prime, they have a _pretty good_ forward group, a below-average D corp, and a great starter.
If every player was in their prime, this is probably a wildcard/3-seed unless Ullmark goes Price-mode.
>Yeah, even if you magically put every player in their prime, they have a pretty good forward group, a below-average D corp, and a great starter.
Pretty good fwd group?
They'd have a Conn Smythe winner in ROR, a Conn Smythe finalist in Eichel, a 50 goal scoring Reinhart, a 48 goal scoring Gionta, a 36 goal scoring Moulson, a 30 goal scoring Kane, a 43 point E-Rod, a 49 point Ennis
They'd have the best forward group in the NHL, and it would definitely be good enough to carry this dcore which would be full of prototypical 2way dmen who would be 2nd pairing guys on contenders (Bogo, Risto, Kulikov, Gorges) and Ullmark who won a Vezina trophy. This would probably be a top 3 team in the League, and you come onto the internet to spread WC/3rd seed propaganda. Bruh
Except all of those guys best seasons came when they were the go to guy on their respective teams. So even if they are in their prime not all of these guys are going to produce even close to those numbers, they would be further down the depth chart and not getting the opportunities they did in those seasons you’re quoting.
This. Ever since the DoD here, I think the blueline is one of if not the biggest determining factor when it comes to making the playoffs. Ristolainen and Kulikov are 3rd pair guys, if that's your first pair you're in trouble over 82 games.
Also I got nothing against Gorges but he was never Tanev level, sorry.
And "not a negative on offense" is a weird title to give a guy that got more than 20 points *once*, and barely got over 15 only one other time.
Like Hal Gill was more offensively reliable than Gorges, and the general consensus on Gill was "he has a long reach defensively and hes mostly useless offensively"
> Like Hal Gill was more offensively reliable than Gorges, and the general consensus on Gill was "he has a long reach defensively and hes mostly useless offensively"
You can deflect a lot of pucks on a large enough pylon.
I agree, but I believe this was the last season of his career, and he didn't even play half of it. When you're on the bottom pairing of this team and d Corp, then it's pretty clear you're not same guy you were in your prime.
And that's the whole problem with this line-up - timing. The names are all recognizable but they're almost all on the wrong end of the spectrum of either not having broke out yet, or in decline.
He was still serviceable just not a god like he was in his prime but yeah that Sabres team was just a complete mess.
Trying to mix youth with experienced guys that couldn’t play as good as they once were, with a bad coach just a mess in all aspects.
It'll work in the right context, with the right timing, and the right group of guys and like you said with a good coach. It's essentially the system being run in Dallas as we speak.
Is it lol? Look at their defenceman. That is an abysmal bad Dcore. Tyler Ennis is in their top 6, as well as a 38 year old Gionta lol. That looks like a pretty awful roster to me.
nah between Lehner and Nilsson their goaltending was actually really good that year, idk why this graphic uses Ullmark he only played one game that year
they have O’Reilly and Eichel at C but outside of that.. the defence is terrible, Ennis, Moulson, and Gionta were all washed, Reinhart and Rodrigues were no where near the players they are today - like this team isn’t that good outside of their goalies and their top 2 centers
> idk why this graphic uses Ullmark he only played one game that year
Well, this is a "starting lines" graphic from the game he played lol. He was actually pretty decent in that game too, 33 saves on 36 shots.
fun(?) fact about this team: Lehner and Andres Nilsson made 81 of the 82 starts. Their team SV% was 6th in the league. They were the only team in the top 14 of SV% not to make the playoffs.
That’s kinda why I didn’t think the B’s would drop off as much as people thought this year after losing all the talent from last year, because their defense and goaltending was still really good.
Darcy actually had the right idea when he finally convinced previous ownership of the need to deleverage and start a rebuild. He started drafting lots of D to incubate, with the intention of then progressively layering in a C spine and eventually flesh out the wings. Unfortunately Tim Murray came along and treated his inherited assets like an all-in fantasy draft, sending the D back years. Botterill knew that the very first order of business needed to be somehow rebuilding the D while simultaneously trying to ice a passable intermediate D.
Preach! While none of them turned out to be top pairing D like he had hoped, Regier drafted Zadarov, Ristolainen, and Myers. Z and Risto were hailed as the twin pillars of our future D. We had 3, highly drafted D over 6'4", boatloads of draft capital (3 1sts in 2015) and the start of a depth prospect pool (Compher, Lemieux, Armia, Grigorenko). Tim Murray turned that into a frequently injured Zach Bogosian, Robin Lehner (who apparently hid his mental health and substance abuse issues very well while they were together in Ottawa, or GMTM just didn't care), and two players known to be difficult in different ways: E. Kane (attitude, maturity, off-ice reputation) and ROR (contract hold-out, discontent with role)... and kept Ristolainen.
When I see the occasional person in our sub defend him or think he would have eventually gotten there had he been allowed to continue what he started I lose my shit. Like out of all our former GM's there's a reason he is the dude who hasn't worked an NHL job since.
We'll never know for sure, but I think Botterill wanted to do what Adams was allowed to do, but came up against Pegula interference and had to do a balancing act between building a prospect pool and trying to win to "keep Jack happy". You can't tell me Pittsburgh's "salary cap guru" gave Jeff Skinner an 8x$9 on his own, and took whatever scraps St. Louis had lying around for ROR (and his full bonus payment). When Adams came in and was allowed to clean house and restart the rebuild it was the first time I had hope as a fan since Briere and Drury walked. However his tenure turns out, he's definitely put in the work on the foundation.
Don't forget about McNabb, who is maybe the best of all the defensemen that GMTM messed up with. He traded McNabb, an AHL player, and 2 second round picks for Deslauries and Fasching.
You can see the potential, this young core with a different (and substantially better) group of vets could have been something. Obviously it wasn't that way then and things didn't go in that direction either.
Not only were they not a playoff team but they had decent odds in the draft lottery. Unfortunately skid to 8th and got Middlestadt instead of Pettersson at their pre-lottery position
Yea how did the worst defensive core ever put together, along with a top 6 that included Brian Gionta, and a bottom 6 of rookies not make the playoffs?
Eh, that's not too surprising. The corpse of Gionta as a first line wing isn't a great start. Going into that season, Ennis probably didn't look like a bad option for a second line wing, but it clearly didn't work out based on his numbers that year. Carrier's ceiling is more of a fringe third line/very good fourth line player, and that's on a Vegas team that's vastly superior to this Buffalo roster. Alex Nylander might've just figured out how to put together a solid season for himself this past year. Moulson was a solid player, especially on the fourth line, but Deslauriers and Girgensons hardly inspire more confidence than being just fourth line guys.
That defense is just brutal on a whole different level. Ullmark managing a .917 SV% with a 3.07 GAA on that 2016-17 Sabres roster is insane.
Maybe if you could get everyone on this roster in their prime at the exact same time...
... you could snag a wildcard spot and lose in the first cuz your defence sucks.
I mean that D Core is pretty bad
Ullmark must’ve been a rookie or pretty close to it
old Brian Gionta and Tyler Ennis in your top 6 isn’t a recipe for success
They had a lot of injuries that year. Eichs had the high ankle sprain to start the year, Kane and ROR both got injured early on and missed a stretch of time, Bogo was hurt pretty much every year he was with the team, and I believe Ennis had some issues at that point in his career too. Surprisingly, Robin Lehner and Anders Nilsson both put up very respectable save percentages that year and the team had Linus with Rochester virtually all season so that he could keep getting a starter's workload
Eeehh this is not the team it appears to be. Very old gionta, an injured on the back 9 ennis, a very young Eichel, Reinhart, who werent too close to where they are now. Not quite yet NHL level Rodrigues, Nylander, Carrier, and Ullmark. An Evander Kane who is still trying to figure out how to be a professional. A not quite establish Marcus Foligno. A recently abandoned Kulikov
Part of the problem is some demanded out. ROR and Eichel demanded trades and/or complained to the media. I believe Reinhart also indicated that he wouldn't be coming back because the Sabres gave him a bridge instead of a long term deal off his ELC. Ullmark made some sort of ridiculous contract demand that only applied to the Sabres (basically asking out). Sabres traded Kane as a pending UFA rental. I'm assuming he wasn't willing to return either.
Basically tanking made the team so toxic anybody with any sort of option/choices chose to leave.
Some of those forwards were very old and washed, or very young and lacking experience.
That defense was atrocious.
That Ullmark wasn't 2024 Ullmark, it was the Ullmark who was very young and unproven.
Wasn’t Phil Housley coaching this team? He’s currently coaching the Rangers defenseman so I can see why this teams D core would’ve been as bad as their records implied
Buffalo was always a team that was “you have to have chemistry” and not just a group of good players.
I remember listening to Leafs lunch in 2014/2015 (before the guys were on Overdrive)
And they were comparing the Leafs roster after drafting Nylander to Buffalo’s. and the question was which team is better?
And it was so obvious that the Sabres had just drafted Eichel, had both Reinhearts, just made a deal for O’Reilly, traded for Lehner. It was an absolute no brainer.
And to think the Leafs have made the playoffs every year since 2017 and the Sabres have still not even made the playoffs is absolutely bonkers.
I’m not hating on Buffalo at all. It just shows that talent alone does not make a team great. But the team needs to just be great as a whole.
To me, the panthers line up (even in regards to toughness) pre Tkuchuk trade makes no sense. They had Chariot, Hagg, Marchment, Acciari, Huberdeau, Weegar, and Giroux. On paper that is a much better team than their 2022/23 roster. But does this team ever know how to play playoff hockey. They had one giveaway last night. ONE! How is that possible?
Bottom 6 is pretty meh; Ulmark was like 7 years old, defense is not terribly strong…also it’s Buffalo and the hockey gods have decided they can’t have nice things.
That’s a brutal defence plus a lot of these guys were very young and not nearly what they are now. If that defence wasn’t the worst in the league I’d be shocked
Is Buffalo the Pirates of the NHL? This gave me weird PTSD of Cole/Glasnow/Morton/Musgrove/Marte/etc. all being Pirates within the last decade and all becoming all-star players for other teams lmao
It’s crazy to think this ~~2017 Buffalo Sabres'~~ [2023 Ottawa Senators roster](https://i.imgur.com/4hJfb8B.png) never made the playoffs
They had the same problems. Good forwards, rough defence, awful goaltending
Eh it’s decent offensively maybe but there’s basically 0 actual defensive capability outside of the 1st pair and Sanderson is still young and growing into that role. Zub is their best defensive guy and realistically he’s a middle pairing guy on a playoff team and bottom pairing on a Cup contender
Ristoleinen was such a scapegoat during that time period. I hear so little about him in Philly tells me he wasn’t as bad as they tried to paint him to be.
Hes gotten a lot better in Philly but he was genuinely bad in Buffalo while playing 25 minutes as the teams 1D. It was a trainwreck.
Buffalo was acting like he was a 1D when he had a negative impact because he played zero defense and just skated out of position to hit on every play.
Tortarella fixed that part of his game fortunately.
I was never a hater, and Sabres fans absolutely love to serial-scapegoat one player after another, but Risto really is a very limited player. He's not a 1D.
If Kulikov and Risto are your top D pair, you're in some trouble... They also have good forward depth, but no player or line on that page really moves the needle for me as far as: "that dude/line's a stud".
This roster was mid and they finished mid as no surprise.
Ennis in the Top 6
Reino putting up around 50 points
Eichel was hurt the first two months with an ankle sprain
Carrier in the Top 9
Plus Risto. Yeah this team was not very good but did have some pieces.
Goalie who was young and not very good at the time.
Forward group taht was young and not very good at the time.
D group who was never good at any time in their career. They are career 4-6 defencemen.
How exactly did the OP think this group would make the playoffs?
God, why did you have to show me the Lightning logo there. 2015 we lost in finals, 2016 and 2018 we lost in 7 in East Finals against eventual cup winners, and 2017 was a nightmare with everyone getting injured, its like our one outlier year since 2015.
I think we're looking back on this with what we've seen these guys develop into. Many were fresh meat back then and still in the process of developing who they would become as a player. It's fun to look back on this, but a lot of these guys aren't the players they are now.
Reinhart: Traded from BUF for Devon Levi and a 1st round pick in Summer 2021.
Rodrigues, Kulikov: FA signings this offseason.
Montour: Traded from BUF for a 3rd round pick in April 2021.
Robin Lehner was the starting goalie this season, and his numbers were decent. However he was horrible in shootouts which cost the team at least 5 or 6 points.
Shows how teams need to stick with a youth movement for longer than just a few seasons. They are developing stars for other teams.
They did need some upgrades on the D-core.
They had the greatest goaltender of all time at one point and never won the cup. Hasek dragged that team to a final and got fucked over. I hope the Sabres win a cup before the Stars ever do again.
Relevant Ullmark thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/mp1uu2/david_pagnotta_per_sources_the_buffalo_sabres_and/
Crazy, Ullmark went 9-6-3 2.63 GAA, and .917 save % in 20 games on a team that only won 15 of 56 games. (covid season).
Signed with Boston for only 5 million per year.
ROR, cup winning 1C, Eichel cupping winning 1C, Ullmark Vezina winner.
To be fair this is entirely hindsight. As others have pointed out already in this thread, a lot of these players developed way beyond what was expected of them, or they were still young. And yeah, that blue line aint great.
At some point, it's more their players didn't want to put in the effort. So they can get traded out of the city. That's 100% what Eichel did and 100% O'Rielly did, watching them play was a nightmare in buffalo. Once behind they just practically gave up.
It really isn't that surprising.
Hell, nobody would know who Zemgus is if it weren't for the asinine/idiotic Latvian fan voting debacle that carried him into the All Star game in 2015.
Some of them became NHL players elsewhere but most of them were not NHLers when they played for Buffalo. A lot of young guys with solid careers in hindsight though.
None of these players were any good then. Eichel only ramped up his production right before being traded to VGK and Ullmark recorded this as his only game of the year (and lost it too). Their special teams was one of the worst in the league and goaltending was mediocre at best. Nothing else on that roster was worth writing home about. Maybe the poster pattern matched some names without knowing much about hockey.
If you picked each of those guys having a great year, then you'd have something.
However, that's a roster of guys that have all had absolute dogshit seasons as well, and those that have since broken out, did not have success there.
O'Reilly is not now, nor has he ever been a 1C on a good hockey team. HE's a 20 goal scorer. On a good team, he's 3C. Gionta was at the dead, useless end of a career in which he hadn't been true top 6 for almost a decade. Kane sucks. Jack & Sam were infants, that 3rd line is dogshit - that's not the Nylander you want, and Erod is only semi-useful when surrounded by killers & snipers.
Don't even get me started on that blue line. It's dogwater.
That's a team I would predict to win 30 games in an NHL season.
I mean, yeah they were pretty deep at forward in hindsight but that d-core is pretty terrible which is probably one of the main reasons why they didn't make it.
They only look deep at forward because most of their best forwards have developed into much better players in 2024 than they were in 2017.
In hindsight starting a bunch of players under 22 isn't a recipe for success
Well no lol but at the same time their problem wasn’t starting a roster of young guys, it was not retaining these guys while they developed together. Obviously there’s nuance to that statement but when you’re building a team and fold your cards too early you’re never going to reach the cumulation of the players peak development.
But most of them wanted out bc they weren’t competitive. So how do you retain those guys to develop if they don’t want to be retained
Well that’s the failure of the organization. I think they invested too heavily in the wrong pieces and didn’t have a long-term strategy towards the growth and success of players outside of “wait and see.”
You trade some pieces and prospects for existing NHLers to build a more competitive roster with veteran presence but still led predominantly by young players
Don’t tell the devils this
Same with goal tending. Ullmark had played a grand total of 21 NHL games at the time this roster sheet was compiled. This particular game was his only NHL start this season. Edit: Realized this was one particular game sheet where he started, they weren't calling Ullmark the "Starting goalie" for this season.
It was the singular game he played for them that season lol
Yep, that team finished near the bottom of the pack offensively. Evander Kane was their only forward with more than 25 goals and no one finished with 60 or more points.
The very next year, O'Reilly takes the Selke, the Conn Smythe, and a Stanley Cup. Bogosian hoists a Cup the following year.
The very next year was the 2017/18 season, not the 2018/19 season where ROR won all that stuff.
but the infographic says 2017 and i don't like thinking that hard :(
And a few years after that, Eichel and Carrier take the cup together, defeating Sam Reinhart in the Final.
That Ullmark kid gets a Vezina, too.
ROR whined and quit his way off the Sabres. “Lost his love for the game” and ran his car into a Tim Hortons. Forever a bum.
It wasn't just ROR though. Numerous players have been outspoken about not enjoying their time on the Sabres in recent years, only to find success elsewhere. And more than one player has said there isn't a winning mentality on the team and too many guys are just content to be playing in the NHL. There is a culture that has developed with the team that needs to change.
The O'Reilly dui happened on july 13th 2015, he was traded to buffalo on June 26th. Dude literally got a DUI like 20 days after joining the sabers. Should have been known then that it wasnt going to work out
He ran into that Timmy Ho's before he ever put on skates for us. It happened not even a month after we traded for him.
Exactly. That’s why a complete burn down and return to relevancy is so hard. Even if you get the right guys, you have to be super, super, super patient.
I wouldn’t even say they were deep at forward, honestly. ROR/Eichel is a very good 1/2 at center, but Kane and Reinhart (who was like a 57 point player at the time, not a 57 goal scorer) are really the only players that are top 6 wingers on a playoff team. Ennis was a top 6 forward for like two years of his career, and Gionta was way past his prime at this point. Their bottom 6 is pretty much all 4th liners, Rodrigues wasn’t putting up the same offensive numbers he is today, and Moulson was absolutely not the same player he was with the Islanders (not sure if that was age or injuries or not playing with Tavares or some combo of the three). Deslauriers and Carrier are 4th line wingers, Nylander busted, and Girgensons, despite being known for the ASG vote, has always been a 20-30 point guy.
Yeah, even if you magically put every player in their prime, they have a _pretty good_ forward group, a below-average D corp, and a great starter. If every player was in their prime, this is probably a wildcard/3-seed unless Ullmark goes Price-mode.
>Yeah, even if you magically put every player in their prime, they have a pretty good forward group, a below-average D corp, and a great starter. Pretty good fwd group? They'd have a Conn Smythe winner in ROR, a Conn Smythe finalist in Eichel, a 50 goal scoring Reinhart, a 48 goal scoring Gionta, a 36 goal scoring Moulson, a 30 goal scoring Kane, a 43 point E-Rod, a 49 point Ennis They'd have the best forward group in the NHL, and it would definitely be good enough to carry this dcore which would be full of prototypical 2way dmen who would be 2nd pairing guys on contenders (Bogo, Risto, Kulikov, Gorges) and Ullmark who won a Vezina trophy. This would probably be a top 3 team in the League, and you come onto the internet to spread WC/3rd seed propaganda. Bruh
Except all of those guys best seasons came when they were the go to guy on their respective teams. So even if they are in their prime not all of these guys are going to produce even close to those numbers, they would be further down the depth chart and not getting the opportunities they did in those seasons you’re quoting.
Reminds of the decade of darkness blue line the Oilers had.
This. Ever since the DoD here, I think the blueline is one of if not the biggest determining factor when it comes to making the playoffs. Ristolainen and Kulikov are 3rd pair guys, if that's your first pair you're in trouble over 82 games.
Big "1st pairing: Smid - Petry" energy.
Dissing the goat gorges. Montréal gorges was the best dfd in the league without being a negative on offense he was tamer before tanev.
Tanev was still Tanev in 2017 the media just wasn't paying attention.
Yeah for real, the disrespect is appalling
Gorges last season in MTL was before Tanev was a full time NHLer
Chris Tanev has been a full time NHLer since 2013 lol.
13-14 Gorges last season in Montreal? Not 2017 Buffalo Gorges after he blocked thousands of shots and his body was breaking down
And tanev was full time in 2012-2013, your point is still completely invalid lmao……
Also I got nothing against Gorges but he was never Tanev level, sorry. And "not a negative on offense" is a weird title to give a guy that got more than 20 points *once*, and barely got over 15 only one other time. Like Hal Gill was more offensively reliable than Gorges, and the general consensus on Gill was "he has a long reach defensively and hes mostly useless offensively"
> Like Hal Gill was more offensively reliable than Gorges, and the general consensus on Gill was "he has a long reach defensively and hes mostly useless offensively" You can deflect a lot of pucks on a large enough pylon.
I agree, but I believe this was the last season of his career, and he didn't even play half of it. When you're on the bottom pairing of this team and d Corp, then it's pretty clear you're not same guy you were in your prime. And that's the whole problem with this line-up - timing. The names are all recognizable but they're almost all on the wrong end of the spectrum of either not having broke out yet, or in decline.
He was still serviceable just not a god like he was in his prime but yeah that Sabres team was just a complete mess. Trying to mix youth with experienced guys that couldn’t play as good as they once were, with a bad coach just a mess in all aspects.
It'll work in the right context, with the right timing, and the right group of guys and like you said with a good coach. It's essentially the system being run in Dallas as we speak.
also 2017 Ullmark is nowhere near 2023 Ullmark
Kulikov on your top pair ain't it
Kulikov top pair and a 38 year old Gionta on the 1st line doesn't exactly scream playoff team.
Ya that D-corps is abysmal
Yeah you could push that entire D-corp down a full pairing each. Which is probably why they struggled as a team.
We know, have you seen the third pairing?
Is it lol? Look at their defenceman. That is an abysmal bad Dcore. Tyler Ennis is in their top 6, as well as a 38 year old Gionta lol. That looks like a pretty awful roster to me.
Is it? They basically have 3 bottom pairs, and their forward depth isn't amazing
Right? The drop off in talent from forward line 2 to 3 is massive.
The bottom 6 is AHL tier, and all of our Dmen at that point were awful. Ullmark was also not who he is now.
But on their fourth line they have [Zemgus Girgensons!](https://youtu.be/PYSRbeYswGQ?si=osN_-w7BkVQzjz9f)
I was going to say, thank God they didn't make playoffs. Then we'd have to listen to doc emrick say his name for an extra month.
lol acting like we’d make it past the 1st round 😭
Plus an actual locker room cancer in Kane.
Eh, at that time I think Risto / Kuli would have been considered a serviceable 2nd pairing on most teams.
Scrolls to the right….who the fuck?
Doesn't seem that crazy to me
Yea every teams for some good players on it, that’s defense is straight ass lol
Right? How is this post so upvoted. It's really **not** that crazy that a team with a borderline AHL defense didn't make the playoffs.
Its not, literally none of these players were even close to their prime in 16-17, maybe Oreilly and Lehner
Yeah d core and goal tending looks awful
nah between Lehner and Nilsson their goaltending was actually really good that year, idk why this graphic uses Ullmark he only played one game that year they have O’Reilly and Eichel at C but outside of that.. the defence is terrible, Ennis, Moulson, and Gionta were all washed, Reinhart and Rodrigues were no where near the players they are today - like this team isn’t that good outside of their goalies and their top 2 centers
> idk why this graphic uses Ullmark he only played one game that year Well, this is a "starting lines" graphic from the game he played lol. He was actually pretty decent in that game too, 33 saves on 36 shots.
fun(?) fact about this team: Lehner and Andres Nilsson made 81 of the 82 starts. Their team SV% was 6th in the league. They were the only team in the top 14 of SV% not to make the playoffs.
Interestingly enough, this was also the year Lehner had a 0% shootout save percentage. Went 0/8. Such a strange goaltending career
If anything his life is even stranger then his hockey career
Long term Oilers fan here to say, you can't do shit in the NHL until you have decent D core.
That’s kinda why I didn’t think the B’s would drop off as much as people thought this year after losing all the talent from last year, because their defense and goaltending was still really good.
100% - gives you a chance in every game
Darcy actually had the right idea when he finally convinced previous ownership of the need to deleverage and start a rebuild. He started drafting lots of D to incubate, with the intention of then progressively layering in a C spine and eventually flesh out the wings. Unfortunately Tim Murray came along and treated his inherited assets like an all-in fantasy draft, sending the D back years. Botterill knew that the very first order of business needed to be somehow rebuilding the D while simultaneously trying to ice a passable intermediate D.
Preach! While none of them turned out to be top pairing D like he had hoped, Regier drafted Zadarov, Ristolainen, and Myers. Z and Risto were hailed as the twin pillars of our future D. We had 3, highly drafted D over 6'4", boatloads of draft capital (3 1sts in 2015) and the start of a depth prospect pool (Compher, Lemieux, Armia, Grigorenko). Tim Murray turned that into a frequently injured Zach Bogosian, Robin Lehner (who apparently hid his mental health and substance abuse issues very well while they were together in Ottawa, or GMTM just didn't care), and two players known to be difficult in different ways: E. Kane (attitude, maturity, off-ice reputation) and ROR (contract hold-out, discontent with role)... and kept Ristolainen. When I see the occasional person in our sub defend him or think he would have eventually gotten there had he been allowed to continue what he started I lose my shit. Like out of all our former GM's there's a reason he is the dude who hasn't worked an NHL job since. We'll never know for sure, but I think Botterill wanted to do what Adams was allowed to do, but came up against Pegula interference and had to do a balancing act between building a prospect pool and trying to win to "keep Jack happy". You can't tell me Pittsburgh's "salary cap guru" gave Jeff Skinner an 8x$9 on his own, and took whatever scraps St. Louis had lying around for ROR (and his full bonus payment). When Adams came in and was allowed to clean house and restart the rebuild it was the first time I had hope as a fan since Briere and Drury walked. However his tenure turns out, he's definitely put in the work on the foundation.
Don't forget about McNabb, who is maybe the best of all the defensemen that GMTM messed up with. He traded McNabb, an AHL player, and 2 second round picks for Deslauries and Fasching.
You can see the potential, this young core with a different (and substantially better) group of vets could have been something. Obviously it wasn't that way then and things didn't go in that direction either.
Sabres org just gets impatient too easily and hits the restart button at the slightest sign of non-monotonic progress.
A lot of these players were developing at the time.
Not only were they not a playoff team but they had decent odds in the draft lottery. Unfortunately skid to 8th and got Middlestadt instead of Pettersson at their pre-lottery position
Cody glass, not Pettersson. Pettersson went 5th. Sabres only moved back 2 spots.
My bad. I had counted up from the standings and saw they finished 5th last. Forgot Vegas came into the league that draft and picked ahead of them.
Yea how did the worst defensive core ever put together, along with a top 6 that included Brian Gionta, and a bottom 6 of rookies not make the playoffs?
Yeah that D core reeked of "will be overly drunk and aggressive against you in Senior men's rec league soon" vibes.
Eh, that's not too surprising. The corpse of Gionta as a first line wing isn't a great start. Going into that season, Ennis probably didn't look like a bad option for a second line wing, but it clearly didn't work out based on his numbers that year. Carrier's ceiling is more of a fringe third line/very good fourth line player, and that's on a Vegas team that's vastly superior to this Buffalo roster. Alex Nylander might've just figured out how to put together a solid season for himself this past year. Moulson was a solid player, especially on the fourth line, but Deslauriers and Girgensons hardly inspire more confidence than being just fourth line guys. That defense is just brutal on a whole different level. Ullmark managing a .917 SV% with a 3.07 GAA on that 2016-17 Sabres roster is insane.
Defence is absolutely brutal
\#1 defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen is a helluva drug
Maybe if you could get everyone on this roster in their prime at the exact same time... ... you could snag a wildcard spot and lose in the first cuz your defence sucks.
Two fourth lines and three third pairs
“Three third pairs” is generous.
Zemgus Girgensons is such a good hockey name
I mean that D Core is pretty bad Ullmark must’ve been a rookie or pretty close to it old Brian Gionta and Tyler Ennis in your top 6 isn’t a recipe for success
This must be the one game Ullmark played because he only played 6 games between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons.
You should see the roster from November 2019, it’s half the Florida Panthers roster.
Kyle Okposo (closer to prime) was also on this roster. Presumably injured at the time
Ah yes, the old: start 32-8-3 & end 6-28-5
October champions becomes March Sadness
North east is super competitive.
They had a lot of injuries that year. Eichs had the high ankle sprain to start the year, Kane and ROR both got injured early on and missed a stretch of time, Bogo was hurt pretty much every year he was with the team, and I believe Ennis had some issues at that point in his career too. Surprisingly, Robin Lehner and Anders Nilsson both put up very respectable save percentages that year and the team had Linus with Rochester virtually all season so that he could keep getting a starter's workload
Still perplexed how Sabres with Gilbert Perrault Rene Martin and the rest never won a cup.
I agreed while reading the forwards then I saw the first pair D and understood.
Eeehh this is not the team it appears to be. Very old gionta, an injured on the back 9 ennis, a very young Eichel, Reinhart, who werent too close to where they are now. Not quite yet NHL level Rodrigues, Nylander, Carrier, and Ullmark. An Evander Kane who is still trying to figure out how to be a professional. A not quite establish Marcus Foligno. A recently abandoned Kulikov
Now imagine if they held onto these players until they reached their prime, while accumulated good draft picks.
Part of the problem is some demanded out. ROR and Eichel demanded trades and/or complained to the media. I believe Reinhart also indicated that he wouldn't be coming back because the Sabres gave him a bridge instead of a long term deal off his ELC. Ullmark made some sort of ridiculous contract demand that only applied to the Sabres (basically asking out). Sabres traded Kane as a pending UFA rental. I'm assuming he wasn't willing to return either. Basically tanking made the team so toxic anybody with any sort of option/choices chose to leave.
Some of those forwards were very old and washed, or very young and lacking experience. That defense was atrocious. That Ullmark wasn't 2024 Ullmark, it was the Ullmark who was very young and unproven.
what about this is crazy. its a pile of kids who were less than half of what they are now
had some offensive juice, but that D core is... something
Wasn’t Phil Housley coaching this team? He’s currently coaching the Rangers defenseman so I can see why this teams D core would’ve been as bad as their records implied
This roster is a prime example that team culture is extremely important in hockey.
Buffalo was always a team that was “you have to have chemistry” and not just a group of good players. I remember listening to Leafs lunch in 2014/2015 (before the guys were on Overdrive) And they were comparing the Leafs roster after drafting Nylander to Buffalo’s. and the question was which team is better? And it was so obvious that the Sabres had just drafted Eichel, had both Reinhearts, just made a deal for O’Reilly, traded for Lehner. It was an absolute no brainer. And to think the Leafs have made the playoffs every year since 2017 and the Sabres have still not even made the playoffs is absolutely bonkers. I’m not hating on Buffalo at all. It just shows that talent alone does not make a team great. But the team needs to just be great as a whole. To me, the panthers line up (even in regards to toughness) pre Tkuchuk trade makes no sense. They had Chariot, Hagg, Marchment, Acciari, Huberdeau, Weegar, and Giroux. On paper that is a much better team than their 2022/23 roster. But does this team ever know how to play playoff hockey. They had one giveaway last night. ONE! How is that possible?
I disagree lol, Alex Nylander is their 3rd line RW and they had Josh Gorges and Cody Franson.
Its Cody Franson’s fault. (He gets blamed for everything 😝)
Bottom 6 is pretty meh; Ulmark was like 7 years old, defense is not terribly strong…also it’s Buffalo and the hockey gods have decided they can’t have nice things.
The Sabers haven’t been good since Lucic ran over Miller. Lol
Not with that defensive corps it isn’t!
No it isn’t lol
recency bias goes hard here?
That’s a brutal defence plus a lot of these guys were very young and not nearly what they are now. If that defence wasn’t the worst in the league I’d be shocked
Coaching was garbage
Yeah 😠
Look at the D lol
Prime Matt Moulson was such a fun player to watch. I always felt so conflicted with how much I liked his game as a Stars fan.
Say what you will about John Tavares but he made Matt Moulson an awful lot of money
Maybe if you only look at their top 9. Defense is atrocious
Is Buffalo the Pirates of the NHL? This gave me weird PTSD of Cole/Glasnow/Morton/Musgrove/Marte/etc. all being Pirates within the last decade and all becoming all-star players for other teams lmao
It’s crazy to think this ~~2017 Buffalo Sabres'~~ [2023 Ottawa Senators roster](https://i.imgur.com/4hJfb8B.png) never made the playoffs They had the same problems. Good forwards, rough defence, awful goaltending
Awful goaltending? Lehner played 59 games with a 0.920 sv%. Not having a single forward crack 60 points was the problem
On paper the defence is decent, it’s just Dorion swinging for the fences on Korpisalo and his bat helicoptering into the crowd.
Eh it’s decent offensively maybe but there’s basically 0 actual defensive capability outside of the 1st pair and Sanderson is still young and growing into that role. Zub is their best defensive guy and realistically he’s a middle pairing guy on a playoff team and bottom pairing on a Cup contender
2017 Sabres goaltending was very highly ranked.
Ristoleinen was such a scapegoat during that time period. I hear so little about him in Philly tells me he wasn’t as bad as they tried to paint him to be.
Hes gotten a lot better in Philly but he was genuinely bad in Buffalo while playing 25 minutes as the teams 1D. It was a trainwreck. Buffalo was acting like he was a 1D when he had a negative impact because he played zero defense and just skated out of position to hit on every play. Tortarella fixed that part of his game fortunately.
I was never a hater, and Sabres fans absolutely love to serial-scapegoat one player after another, but Risto really is a very limited player. He's not a 1D.
>He's not a 1D. Hes a 4D at best who was played in 25 minute 1D role at young age. Terrible plan.
If Kulikov and Risto are your top D pair, you're in some trouble... They also have good forward depth, but no player or line on that page really moves the needle for me as far as: "that dude/line's a stud".
This roster was mid and they finished mid as no surprise. Ennis in the Top 6 Reino putting up around 50 points Eichel was hurt the first two months with an ankle sprain Carrier in the Top 9 Plus Risto. Yeah this team was not very good but did have some pieces.
Goalie who was young and not very good at the time. Forward group taht was young and not very good at the time. D group who was never good at any time in their career. They are career 4-6 defencemen. How exactly did the OP think this group would make the playoffs?
By forgetting that 2017 was seven whole years ago, which is easy to do to be honest
Looks like the 2019-20 Devils. Deceptive team that had major defensive issues and offensive depth is worse than it actually seems
Ullmark then wasn’t the Ullmark of today, Gorges’ best days were behind him and Kulikov was never meant to be a top-pair D-man.
Ullmark only played one game this season. Lehner was the primary goalie
God, why did you have to show me the Lightning logo there. 2015 we lost in finals, 2016 and 2018 we lost in 7 in East Finals against eventual cup winners, and 2017 was a nightmare with everyone getting injured, its like our one outlier year since 2015.
Too busy eating pizza logs and drinking blue lights
Some of those guys are solid now and may have just been developing then.
Not when you look at how old a lot of them were.
I think we're looking back on this with what we've seen these guys develop into. Many were fresh meat back then and still in the process of developing who they would become as a player. It's fun to look back on this, but a lot of these guys aren't the players they are now.
The 2017 Sabres roster is full of guys who found their stride in 2020 or since, but were fairly average to mediocre then
That’s 2017. Most of the players that have matured into what they are today were young at that time.
Anyone who’s done their research, how did all of these former Sabres make it to the Panthers? Big trade or individually?
Reinhart: Traded from BUF for Devon Levi and a 1st round pick in Summer 2021. Rodrigues, Kulikov: FA signings this offseason. Montour: Traded from BUF for a 3rd round pick in April 2021.
E Rod but it’s 2017
That lineup has 0 depth, an injury to one of Ullmark, Eichel, or O'Reilly would cripple them
Defense is slow as hell
This team is terrible what are you talking about
It’s cause the Sabres suck
Robin Lehner was the starting goalie this season, and his numbers were decent. However he was horrible in shootouts which cost the team at least 5 or 6 points.
Yeah, I'm flabberghasted how that d core didn't make the playoffs
Cody Franson and Josh Gorges... completely forgot about them. That team had pretty terrible D with very young forwards. Not really surprising.
Definitely underachieved, but there are some solidly mediocre guys on the bottom half of the roster.
Shows how teams need to stick with a youth movement for longer than just a few seasons. They are developing stars for other teams. They did need some upgrades on the D-core.
It's crazy that 7 years later a Blues fan finds this crazy. That's the crazy part here. Did you just awaken from a coma?
Lol that D line up negates anything the offense accomplished.
They had the greatest goaltender of all time at one point and never won the cup. Hasek dragged that team to a final and got fucked over. I hope the Sabres win a cup before the Stars ever do again.
Not with that D
Relevant Ullmark thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/mp1uu2/david_pagnotta_per_sources_the_buffalo_sabres_and/ Crazy, Ullmark went 9-6-3 2.63 GAA, and .917 save % in 20 games on a team that only won 15 of 56 games. (covid season). Signed with Boston for only 5 million per year. ROR, cup winning 1C, Eichel cupping winning 1C, Ullmark Vezina winner.
I’m not. Brian Gionta on the 1st line and a crappy defensive core.
One person on that lineup played 82 games that year.
No it's not lol a lot of these guys were young and much shittier than they are now.
Oh wow. Matt Moulson. I haven't thought about him in forever. He had some solid years!
the D is beyond awful, the bottom 6 is beyond awful, and their RW1 was 38 and had 35 points in a full 82 game season. this roster is terrible.
No it isn't. That blue line is garbage
Well, they only had one chance to make the playoffs so of course it’s “never”
No it’s not. McCabe still hadn’t learned how to play defence so our best dman was risto….
It’s crazier to think that Tim Murray saw this roster and was like “fuckin’ nailed it”
Is it? That D sucks, and many of those forwards are not and/or were not everyday NHLers
maybe its a good fantasy team? because it basically has no top six. bottom twelve?
The D core is not great and those forwards were either young and developing or out of the league soon lol. Not that surprising tbh
Is it really that surprising?!? To miss the playoffs for 13 seasons you have to have issues within the organization from top to bottom.
To be fair this is entirely hindsight. As others have pointed out already in this thread, a lot of these players developed way beyond what was expected of them, or they were still young. And yeah, that blue line aint great.
The defense was terrible, everyone is terrible but McCabe. Kulikov was the biggest disappointment
At some point, it's more their players didn't want to put in the effort. So they can get traded out of the city. That's 100% what Eichel did and 100% O'Rielly did, watching them play was a nightmare in buffalo. Once behind they just practically gave up.
It really isn't that surprising. Hell, nobody would know who Zemgus is if it weren't for the asinine/idiotic Latvian fan voting debacle that carried him into the All Star game in 2015.
Linus Ullmark. Guy really had a career Renaissance huh
D sucks, ennis sucks, 3rd and 4th lines full of nobodies. A good goalie and 5 good forwards. They performed to their ability.
Is it though? The team with 38 year old Brian Gionta at 1RW and Kulikov on the 1st pair and rookies/2nd years throughout the lineup?
Some of them became NHL players elsewhere but most of them were not NHLers when they played for Buffalo. A lot of young guys with solid careers in hindsight though.
All good points, also Ulmark (who didn't really start playing for a few years later) wasn't the same as he is now
a team so deep it had an all-star on the fourth line
Abysmal defense. Not only were they limited in puck movement those 6 were also limited defensively
Jack Eichel was their top scorer with 57 points. Not crazy.
Not really. Put those players together today, sure , they'd be decent. In 2017 they were some decent prospects and a bunch of spare parts.
Ullmark started 4 games in 2016-2017 and 2017-2018.. It's crazy that this post has this many upvotes.
None of these players were any good then. Eichel only ramped up his production right before being traded to VGK and Ullmark recorded this as his only game of the year (and lost it too). Their special teams was one of the worst in the league and goaltending was mediocre at best. Nothing else on that roster was worth writing home about. Maybe the poster pattern matched some names without knowing much about hockey.
A decent team but not a contender. Forwards are quite good and the defense is middle of the road.
Where’s okposo
If you picked each of those guys having a great year, then you'd have something. However, that's a roster of guys that have all had absolute dogshit seasons as well, and those that have since broken out, did not have success there. O'Reilly is not now, nor has he ever been a 1C on a good hockey team. HE's a 20 goal scorer. On a good team, he's 3C. Gionta was at the dead, useless end of a career in which he hadn't been true top 6 for almost a decade. Kane sucks. Jack & Sam were infants, that 3rd line is dogshit - that's not the Nylander you want, and Erod is only semi-useful when surrounded by killers & snipers. Don't even get me started on that blue line. It's dogwater. That's a team I would predict to win 30 games in an NHL season.
Looking at the defense, it's pretty obvious why.
If you bench Gianta, Ennis, Moulson, Gorges, and Franson and this is a much better team in 2024 than in 2017
I mean they were so deep they had an NHl Allstar on their 4th line! :)
Many players were at the end of their career (gionta, gorges) and other at their beginning