Buffalo, New York — This season, the Buffalo Sabres’ luck with injuries hasn’t been great. On both sides of the All-Star break, that persisted. The Sabres were informed before of the break that forward Jack Quinn would be sidelined for eight weeks due to a lower-body ailment. After the break, the squad was informed that defenseman Mattias Samuelsson would be out for the remainder of the campaign due to an upper-body injury.
Following their bye week, the Sabres finish with a 22-23-4 record, so add that to the list of misfortunes they have experienced this season.The coach of the Sabres, Don Granato, stated, “You can’t dwell on stuff, you can’t be dragged from behind, from what may have just happened, or didn’t happen.”
The Sabres expected to make the playoffs going into this season. Granato, the general manager, and the bar players all officially agreed on that. Evaluating how things transpired is crucial as the team fights to stay in the playoff picture and confronts the prospect of missing the playoffs for a record 13 seasons in a row. Specifically, it matters how Adams evaluates the Sabres’ deficiencies. Furthermore, the question of how much an injury should affect this team’s assessment arises with each new injury.The Sabres have missed 147 man games because of injuries, according to NHL Injury Viz. That is around league average and ranks 14th in the NHL. Their injured players have the 15th-highest cap hit in the NHL.
The Lost (positive) WAR of injured players, which is a weighted three-year average of Evolving Hockey’s Wins Above Replacement statistic, is another metric measured by NHL Injury Viz. The Sabres rank 16th in the NHL by that metric.With just 150 man games lost during the whole season, the Sabres were the fourth-healthiest club in the NHL last year, according to NHL Injury Viz.
Hence, part of the Sabres’ decline this season might be attributed to their increased injury load from the previous campaign.Nevertheless, the Sabres are about league average when it comes to injury luck. Some teams have experienced more hardships than Buffalo, and some teams have been lucky enough to have fewer injuries. The Sabres will lose at least 50 games this season due to Samuelsson’s season-long absence and Quinn’s two-month absence. This will make their quest to close the ten-point gap with the Red Wings for the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference all the more difficult.
However, a closer examination of Buffalo’s injury situation this season reveals that it’s not the only explanation for the team’s difficulties. Thirty-two of the 147 games lost that NHL Injury Viz measured are Quinn’s. Quinn suffered an Achilles tear during his offseason training in June, which prevented him from playing from the beginning of the season. When Quinn returned in mid-December, the Sabres saw a significant improvement in their lineup.
However, after learning of his injuries during the offseason, the Sabres also did not attempt to replace him. They returned with the same group of forwards as the previous campaign. Due to Quinn’s most recent injury, Zach Benson, an 18-year-old rookie, was the lone new forward added to the starting lineup. Benson will now play on the second line. The Sabres ought to have done more to find a replacement during the summer or early in the campaign if Quinn’s absence was going to have such a negative impact on the squad.
To increase their forward depth, they did deal for Eric Robinson, but that wasn’t until early December. Before then, the Sabres tried to fill the hole by calling up AHL players including Jiri Kulich, Lukas Rousek, Brandon Biro, and Isak Rosen. None of those guys, though, are still in the NHL.
In addition, Matt Savoie, who remained on the roster to receive practice time but only played 3:55 in one game before the Sabres moved him back to his junior team, is included in the 147 man games lost total. Zemgus Girgensons is the only player on the Sabres who has missed ten or more games, aside from Quinn and Savoie.
Not that injuries haven’t affected the Sabres, though. Tage Thompson’s broken hand kept him out of action for three weeks in November. This season, he has missed nine games. Jeff Skinner has missed eight games, while Alex Tuch has missed seven. Last season, Buffalo’s top line consisted of those three players. Over the course of 67 games, they combined for 581 minutes of five-on-five action. They scored 118 goals and missed only 15 games together. They have only scored 45 goals this season and have already missed 24 games. Just 144 minutes of five-on-five play have been spent with each other, and Don Granato has occasionally rotated that line to balance the lineup in response to other injuries.
Since this is the NHL as well, players will undoubtedly be dealing with injuries that we are unaware of. However, that’s something that every team in the league deals with and is almost hard to quantify.
Granato stated on Sunday that he believes the players’ psychological responses to the injuries they sustained earlier in the season weren’t as strong as they could have been. It’s excellent that he isn’t concerned by the latest injuries because this squad can’t afford to use them as an excuse.
Granato expressed his opinion that the other players who will need to step up, be called upon, and play more minutes are in a much better state of mind than they were. “Their mental state has greatly improved in the past month.” Despite the loss of these players, I have complete faith in the group to fill the void left by their absence.
