Amerks end tough season on a sour note, but some bright spots emerge

Published by hockeybuzz.com, 4-16-2017


After making huge strides last season as the Buffalo Sabres emerged from two years at the bottom of the league with a season of progress before they took a step back this season. Among the issues that plagued Buffalo this season were key injuries, player/coach disconnect, vet/youngin disconnect, a weak defense-corps and severe lack of depth. Outside of disconnects on the Sabres, a troublesome aspect of the entire organization was lack of depth which was exposed when injuries hit hard, especially on defense and in addition to defensive woes in Buffalo, the Rochester Americans ended up feeling the brunt of it.

Whatever depth the Sabres had this season was stretched thin, something that didn't bode well for Rochester. It's a problem that's not unique to the Sabres/Amerks as an NHL club is constantly tapping into the farm team when injuries strike. With injuries mounting on the Buffalo blueline, the Sabres got help in the form of defensemen Justin Falk and Taylor Fedun, Rochesters top pairing. Both were called up in the middle of November and stuck with the Sabres well into December.

From November 12 when Fedun joined Falk in Buffalo to December 17 when he was sent back to Rochester, the Amerks went 4-11-1, were outscored by a 35-57 margin, were outshot 526 to 423 as a defense-corps of Casey Nelson, Eric Burgdoerfer, Brady Austin, Paul Geiger and Mac Bennett, and Brycen Martin, among others, were overwhelmed and undermanned. Rochester went from a middle of the pack 5-5-0 team to the lower levels of the conference.

The thin defense corps left goaltenders Linus Ullmark, John Muse, Jason Kasdorf and Jonas Johansson as ducks in a shooting gallery all season long. Ullmark had a pretty strong season for the Amerks going 26-27-2 with a 2.87 GAA and .909 SV%. He faced a league-high 1,678 shots while his 1,525 saves also were tops. Of note for those of us in Sabreland who watch shootout struggles from Buffalo's goaltending duo, Ullmark stopped 10 of 14 shootout attempts for a .714 SV%.

The Amerks were shut out 3-0 by the Albany Devils (NJD) last night and finished the season with a good stretch going 8-4-1 in the final 13 games. That included a 5-3 home win the prior night against the Devils to close out the home portion of the season. A couple of players also left the ice on the upswing. Forward Nick Baptiste finished with nine points (5+4) in his final eight games and Justin Bailey had seven points (4+3) in his last 10. Both will be expected to make a strong push for the Sabres roster next season as will forward Evan Rodrigues who played very well in his 30 games with Buffalo. Although four goals and two assists isn't mind-blowing Rodrigues held his own in a bottom-six role while showing he has the tools to stick with the big club.

Falk ended up playing 52 games for the Sabres and earned a contract extension from Murray in the process. Fedun is an unrestricted free agent and may be looking for greener pastures after he displayed solid two-way acumen at the NHL-level as his seven assists and plus-3 rating in 27 games would indicate. We're no sure if any bridges were burned this season, but he'd be a nice re-sign for the club.

When the team went in the tank for two seasons, the roster on both clubs was left in shambles. Murray began filling his NHL club with talent, but acquiring that talent sometimes meant plucking prospects from the farm system. That depleted system, especially on the blueline, really hurt this season and it will take more than one off season to address it properly. We can expect an influx of draft picks and free agents to make their way to Rochester this summer but how many and how much of an impact they will make is to be determined.

The Amerks recently signed defenseman Anthony Florentino (2013, 143rd-overall) to an AHL contract and he looks to be a solid defender. "Flo" spent the last five games of the season with Rochester and was an even plus/minus. Up front they'll have Alexander Nylander in a scorers role should he not be able to crack the lineup and in goal, Johansson looks to be the starter next season as Ullmark looks to be NHL-bound.

Although it's not all doom and gloom over there, a 25th place finish in the league for Rochester isn't' exactly rainbows, unicorns and jujus either. Murray has a lot of work to do with both clubs this off season and building quality depth in Rochester is something that won't be overlooked.

From Russia, with love? Sabres said to be signing KHL's Viktor Antipin

Published by hockeybuzz.com, 3-14-2017


First there was the swap with Florida where the Sabres traded defenseman Mark Pysyk and two pick for defenseman Dmitry Kulikov and the 33rd overall. Then Buffalo GM Tim Murray selected Vasily Goltov, a Russian center whom Sabres selected later that day in the seventh round.

Now word has it that the Sabres are about to sign a free agent defenseman from the Kontinental Hockey League once his season is over. Sportsnet's Elliot Freidman wrote in his "30 Thoughts" today that "24-year-old Viktor Antipin is expected to join Buffalo."

Antipin is a 5'11" 179 lb. defenseman who has played for Metallurg Magnitogorsk of the KHL for the past six seasons compiling 98 points (36+62) in 266 games with a plus-66 rating. In 69 playoff games for Metallurg he upped his .37 regular season points/game to .45 ppg with 31 points on 13 goals and 18 assists.

The Sabres are left to span the globe to find defensemen because of a very thin pool. It's a situation that's caused problems with the big club but has really wreaked havoc with their AHL affiliate, the Rochester Americans. Going into the season the Amerks had three veteran d-men they were going to anchor their defense with--Justin Falk, Taylor Fedun and Eric Burgdoerfer. However, because of injuries most notably to Kulikov (who's injured again) and Zach Bogosian (missed 26 games) the Sabres pulled Falk to the big club for 45 games (and counting,) Fedun for 25 and Burgdoerfer for another two. Casey Nelson, a 2016 college free agent signee (Minnesota State) was also in Buffalo for the first nine games of the season because of the Kulikov injury.

What remained in Rochester was a skeleton crew of defensemen that have been overwhelmed all season.

Help is on the horizon in that highly touted prospect Brendan Guhle will be turning pro next season, although it looks as if he'll be headed straight to the Sabres. St. Cloud State defenseman Will Borgen (2015, 92nd overall) will be in Rochester next season and Devante Stephens (2015, 122nd) will also be eligible to play in the AHL next season. The only Rochester defenseman under contract for next season is Nelson. Brady Austin (2012, 193rd) will be a restricted free agent at the end of the season and whether or not they re-sign him is up in the air.

The Sabres were once again looking at the college free agent market and were said to be in on Minnesota State sophomore defenseman Daniel Brickley but he intends to return for his junior season. With him out of the equation Buffalo is said to be going after St. Lawrence d-man Gavin Bayreuther. According to Elliot in the same piece,  "It’s believed Dallas was the most aggressive pursuer, with Buffalo and Colorado lurking."

With the college FA market really thin this season and the team not expected to sign 2013 fifth round draft pick Anthony Florentino (Providence Friars,) I was told by Kris Baker of sabresprospects.com that the Sabres "were going hard for Euro FA's" right now and sure enough, with the news of the impending signing of Antipin, "There's the Euro."

Murray put himself in a tough spot when he focused almost exclusively on the forward group while using defensemen as currency in trades. There's been a huge shift in talent away from d-prospects and young players when he did his wheeling and dealing for young, veteran forwards. It's a self-inflicted bind he's got himself in and it will be interesting to see how they come out of this.

Right now Baker called Buffalo "desperate" and it's to the point where a real good (according to Baker) but not "amazing" prospect like Bayreuther will probably be able to burn the first year of his two-year contract this season, something they did with Nelson.

Prior to last year's draft Murray had not used a draft pick on a Russian as GM in Buffalo. There's always been this thought that he's had an aversion to players from the Motherland. Perhaps it's gotten to the point where every area in the world's been scouted so much, from North American colleges to Denmark, Finland and Sweden that there's really not much uncharted territory out there, except for maybe Russia because of the so-called "Russian Factor."

Times may be changing, see Artemi Panarin and Nikita Zaitsev, to name a couple, and teams may have no choice but to scour Russia for players.

And that includes Murray and the Buffalo Sabres.

No need for Buffalo to reach for a d-man at No. 8

Reprinted with permission from hockeybuzz.com


Conventional wisdom has the Buffalo Sabres coming out of the eighth slot in the 2016 NHL Draft with one of the top-three defenseman--Olli Joulevi, Jakob Chychrun or Mikhail Sergachev. All three are left-hand shots, which happens to be a right/left area of need in the system and all have offensive acumen based upon strong skating. Yet each bring a little something different to the table.

Most mock drafts have at least one of them there for the Sabres yet some believe that all three will be gone before Buffalo is on the clock at No. 8. The cool part about what the Sabres have been able to accomplish these last three drafts is that key roster positions look to have been filled, those being top-two centers (along with strength and depth down the middle) and a top-pairing defenseman. In 2014 they selected a top-six center in Sam Reinhart who was moved to the wing because of the 2015 Draft where they drafted Jack Eichel and traded for Ryan O'Reilly. In 2013 the Sabres drafted Rasmus Ristolainen with the 8th-overall pick and he anchored the Buffalo defense last season.

Catching up with Sabres d-prospect, Anthony Florentino

Reprinted with permission from hockeybuzz.com


It's been about a year since we last chatted with Anthony Florentino. The Providence Friars defenseman and 2013 fifth-round pick of the Buffalo Sabres (143rd overall) was coming off of a solid freshman season where he posted a very respectable five goals and 11 points and was a plus-12. Providence went 22-11-6 that year and defeated Quinnipiac in the first round of the 2014 NCAA Men's Hockey Tournament before bowing to eventual champion Union.

That turned out to be the set-up for what was about to transpire this past season.

While on the precipice of the big game in April, Providence head coach Nate Leaman told Nancy Marrapese-Burrell of the Boston Globe about the learning process his team went through over the course of the last year. "It was a great year of learning for our program. When I first took over the program, we didn’t have a guy who had ever played a playoff game. When we get ranked No. 1 preseason in the league, No. 3 in the country, you talk about a lot of things, but we didn’t have one guy in the locker room who had lived through any of those things.

“Obviously, there is a target on your back, but more importantly, what happened to us early in the year is we didn’t play to our identity for a long time. We got away from our identity and I think that is why we were up, we were down. I think that was the hard part."

Providence went into the tournament with an at-large bid then proceeded to win the 2015 NCAA Championship with a stunning 4-3 victory over Jack Eichel and the Boston University Terriers. Also of note is that the Terriers themselves had a remarkable turnaround going from 10 wins in 2013-14 to 28 wins last season thanks in large part to Eichel.

Ramp-up to the 2015 NHL Draft Pt. 2--The d-pipeline

Reprinted with permission from hockeybuzz.com


With the emergence of Tampa Bay's Victor Hedman and his dominant performance thus far in the Stanley Cup playoffs, the defenseman seems to be taking center stage in the NHL. And it's not just a matter of Hedman being matched up against a really good team with some top-notch players. The  6'6" 232 lb. native of Sweden has been at the fore of shutting down elite talent in the Chicago's Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane and his play has overshadowed the Blackhawk's two-time Norris Trophy winner Duncan Keith who, up until this series with the Lightning, was in serious consideration for the Conn Smythe Trophy as this year's playoff MVP.

Perhaps were seeing a new era in the NHL where the defenseman is King of the Hill. Both Hedman and Keith are the complete package--two-way skill, speed and smarts--although the scary part about Hedman is that he does it five inches taller and 40 lbs. heavier than Keith. Not to be dismissed in the series either is Hawks d-man Brent Seabrook, a big, strong all-around d-man with offensive acumen and a bit of a bite to his game.

Sabres at 'Canes for last preseason game, plus...

Reprinted with permission from hockeybuzz.com



The Buffalo Sabres are in Raleigh, NC tonight getting ready for their final preseason against the Carolina Hurricanes. And for a handful of players, this will be the last chance for them to impress before a decision is made on where they'll start the season.

It was a spirited, workmanlike 2014 training camp full of competition for roster spots, something that was a focal point of the organization heading into camp.

One of the players battling for a spot is Sabres defenseman Tyson Strachan who was signed by GM Tim Murray to a one-year deal back in early July. The well-traveled journeyman came into camp this season with promises from the Sabres that there would be an open competition for what roster spots were available. And to him, the team delivered on that promise.

"Honestly, that was what they told me in July, and I think that’s what they’re doing now,” defenseman Tyson Strachan said yesterday. “Really, at the end of the day, that’s all you can hope for and all you can appreciate is getting a fair look and being given the opportunity. What you do with it is on you.”

Strachan has performed very well thus far and the former 5th round pick (137th overall) will have another opportunity to show what he can offer while playing against the team that drafted him back in 2003.

Sibling tough-love and family help define Anthony Florentino

Reprinted with permission from hockeybuzz.com


One of the things about the Traverse City Tournament is that not all of a teams prospects participate. The eight-team event hosted by the Detroit Red wings is tailor-made for 18-19 yr. old draftees, with some late-bloomers, and free agents thrown in for good measure.

Missing from the tournament, though, are international prospects like goalie Linus Ullmark (who should make an appearance next season,) and wingers Gustav Possler and Victor Oloffson. All three happen to be on the same team, MODO Hockey of the Swedish Elite League. They're already two games into their season.

College players are also not involved in the tournament either as they're readying themselves for the upcoming season. Players like JT Compher (Michigan,) Hudson Fasching (Minnesota) and goalie Cal Peterson (Notre Dame) are in that group.

So too is Providence defenseman, Anthony Florentino. Instead of attending Traverse City, he's with his Friars teammates getting ready for their season opener October 10th at Ohio State.

Traverse City would have been a great way for him to ride into fall and the beginning of hockey season as Florentino had a real strong summer. He showed well in his second Sabres Development Camp in back July and was an invitee to the US National Junior Evaluation Camp in August. He made an impact at both camps and was on a good roll.

The 6'1" 210 lb. Florentino began the summer well, with the 5th round pick (2013) proceeding to do something at the development camp scrimmage he can't do in college--drop the gloves. He and fellow Sabres prospect Justin Kea (2012, 73rd) went at it during the scrimmage in a quick bout that got the crowd going.



"I'd asked him the shift before if he wanted to go," said Florentino, "but he said he was too tired and I didn't want just a half-assed fight." With his Team Blue going down a goal the next shift, Florentino thought they might need a bit of a lift. "Our team went down and I thought I could help by sparking some intensity," he said. So he asked Kea again. The 6'4" 220 lb. forward obliged.

It didn't matter that Kea was bigger. Florentino took a punch and gave a punch and simply shrugged off the disparity. "Size didn't matter," he chuckled, "I've been in worse situations."

Perhaps those "worse situations" he alluded to came about when he was growing up in West Roxbury, a southwest neighborhood in Boston.

Six more picks for the Sabres in Rounds 3-7, and a quick overview

The Buffalo Sabres entered the 2013 with 10 draft picks. They left with 11 prospects.

In the first two rounds, they chose five players--two defensmen in the first round and three forwards in the second round. They followed that with a third-rounder, three fifth rounders a sixth and a seventh.

The rest of the picks:

• 69th --Nicholas Baptiste, RW, 6'1" 201 lbs.
• 129th-Cal Peterson, G, 6'1" 175 lbs.
• 130th-Gustav Possler RW, 6' 0" 183 lbs.
• 143th-Anthony Florentino, RD 6'1" 227 lbs.
• 159th-Sean Malone, C 5'11" 183 lbs.
• 189th-Eric Locke, C 5'10, 183 lbs.

Kris Baker of sabresprospects.com recaps the draft succintly and for more info on the picks, click here.

Bakes was also on WGR's Howard Simon Show recapping the draft. Most of the segment was dedicated to the upper picks but he did have the chance to touch upon some of lower picks.

Defenseman Anthony Florentino topped his list of most intriguing late round prospects.

Of Florentino, Baker said, "Very underated in this draft class. Can do a little bit of everything, doesn't have too many flaws to his game, a nice kid off the ice but a mean kid on it. "

"I gotta tell ya," Baker continued sequeing to his next most intriguing prospect, "this Cal Peterson kid he is old school."

Here's how Bakes described the goalie, "He's scrappy, he's a battler, he'll poke-check. He'll stop the puck, but sometimes he'll come out and want to stop the shooter. He's very aggressive."

Baker points out that Peterson will be going to Notre Dame. He's one of five players drafted this year that will be taking the college route:  second round picks JT Compher (Michigan) and Connor Hurley, (Notre Dame); Florentino (Providence); Malone (Harvard.)

Nearly half of the Sabres draft haul this year will be headed to college and will have much longer to develop, up to four years, before they'll turn pro. Having five from one draft class really projects out well for the organization.

Via Bill Hoppe, Olean Times Herald, 'With so many picks and our contract situation, you don’t want to waste those picks because their contracts all come up at the same time,' amateur scouting director Kevin Devine explained Sunday on the Prudential Center floor after the Sabres finished picking. 'We wouldn’t be able to sign three or four of them. So that was a plan. We looked at the college route and Europeans for the new CBA, which now gives us four years for those guys over there.'

The odds for any player taken outside the top-five making it to the NHL, much less making an impact, aren't all that great. As you move down the draft it becomes slim to none.

But you never know what can happen with a particluar player. They obviously have enough skill to play, and something about them says there's a possibility. Having four years to allow for the player to develop is a nice cushion.

Having five picks like that, while also having six picks going the junior route where the projection is one to three years, really sets the team up nicely down the road.


The Sabres had themselves quite a haul at the 2013 NHL Draft.

In what's said to be the deepest draft in years they picked five players within the first 52 picks.

One (Rasmus Ristolainen) might be able to jump right to the NHL this season. Another (Nikital Zadorov) is only a year or two away.

They went with size and they went with character. And they looked to pick players with two-way game.

With 11 total picks the Sabres had the luxury of picking two hometown boys in Justin Bailey and Malone with the former being a legitimate power forward prospect.

After focusing upon centers last year they grabbed defense in the first round. Wingers were slightly predominant within positional balance:  four wingers, three centers, three defensemen, one goalie.

A post-draft wrap with GM Darcy Regier and Assistant GM/Head Amateur Scout Kevin Devine can be seen here.

Every year, teams are very happy with their draft and this year is no different for the Sabres.

An overall grade here would be a B+. They did some great things, but the only area that they didn't seem to address was top-line scoring, which they wanted in the top-four but couldn't attain.

Other than that, it'll be three or four years before we get a full take on what Devine and his merry band of scouts accomplished at the 2013 draft.

For a list of (very positive) draft grades from various media outlets provided by sabres.com click here.