Sabres news, some good and not so good.

First off, some really good news for NHL fans as the league is targeting a January 13th start to a 56-game NHL season. Whether or not there will be fans in the seats in any capacity remains to be seen as Coronavirus vaccine manufacturing and distribution is just beginning but there is light at the end of a tunnel and even though it's long and dark, the first steps back to a sense of normalcy have been taken.

The National Hockey League has been hit hard by the pandemic and with that we'll lead into the not-so-good news for the Buffalo Sabres this long off season before ending on some happier notes.

Financial health of the NHL and Sabres

NHL franchises took a tough hit in the Spring as the normal season was cancelled in March, but the league managed to scrape out some TV revenue with an alternative end to the regular season and a full slate of playoff games in two bubbles. The toll it took on some franchises, including the Buffalo Sabres, was pretty harsh. In it's annual listing of team values Forbes outlined the impact of the pandemic on the league:

--the average team value dropped by 2%

--the $4.4 billion in revenue from a season that was 85% completed was 14% below the prior year

--operating income was down a whopping 68% ($250 million)

The rich/poor disparity was glaring as well in a pandemic-ravaged 2019-20 season. "The league’s five most valuable teams—the New York Rangers ($1.65 billion), the Toronto Maple Leafs ($1.5 billion), the Montreal Canadiens ($1.34 billion), the Chicago Blackhawks ($1.085 billion) and the Boston Bruins ($1 billon)," wrote Forbes, "accounted for almost a quarter of the league’s revenue. Without them, the league would have lost $50 million."

Unfortunately the Sabres aren't amongst those big-market, money-machines even though they have big-money ownership in Terry and Kim Pegula. The Pegula's saw the current value of their team drop 4% to $385 million on an initial investment of $189 million in 2011. There were seven other teams in Buffalo's boat at -4% and five who fared worse at -5%.

According to Forbes, revenue for the Sabres last season was $120 million with only 10 teams below them (the NY Rangers led the league with $225 million in revenue) while operating income for Buffalo was $-11 million, which was seventh-worst in the league (the Montreal Canadiens led with $87 million on revenue of $215 million.)

Possible NHL realignment for 2020-21

Those are some big losses for Buffalo but in a tribute to the commitment the Pegula's made at their 2011 introductory press conference, management has been given the financial resources to ice a roster that will hopefully end their league long, nine-year playoff drought.

Unfortunately for the Sabres, the pandemic has forced the NHL to temporarily realign their divisions. International travel restrictions are probably giving us an all-Canadian division with the league leaning towards three regional divisions in the States. Preliminary indications has the Sabres in a group with Boston, New Jersey, NY Islanders, NY Rangers, Philadelphia and Washington along with Pittsburgh or Carolina. Only two of those teams, Buffalo and New Jersey, failed to make the expanded playoffs last year while Boston, Washington and Pittsburgh have been perennial playoff teams. Add in the Islanders, Philadelphia and Carolina as teams on the upswing and the Sabres are in a bit of a pickle.

Should the league be looking at another expanded playoff scenario of 24 teams (six from each division,) the Sabres will need to get into the top six. Boston hasn't missed the playoffs since 2015-16 and have a Stanley Cup finals appearance since then while Washington has the 2018 Stanley Cup and hasn't missed the post season since 2013-14 so putting those two at or near the top of the division isn't much of a reach. The NY Islanders made a run to the 2020 eastern conference finals while Philadelphia lost a seven-game, second round series to those same Islanders and either Pittsburgh, with their long history of making the playoffs during the entirety of the Sidney Crosby-era (2006-present, including three Cups) or an upstart Carolina franchise (two consecutive playoff appearances,) seem poised to take the fifth spot.

That leaves three teams vying for one playoff spot--the New Jersey Devils, NY Rangers and Buffalo Sabres.

Does Buffalo have the wherewithal to take that spot? Adding 2018 league MVP Taylor Hall helps, and so does trading for top-six center Eric Staal but they may need to upgrade goaltending and/or their defense corps if they want to make it.

Three Sabres make IIHF World Junior Team Canada and Team USA  squads

On a positive note, Buffalo's prospect pool is getting stronger. As noted in the previous blog their AHL affiliate, the Rochester Americans, should see a sizeable influx of homegrown talent this upcoming season and behind them is another group that's making it's way through the system.

Center Dylan Cozens leads the way with the 2019, seventh-overall pick set to make his second consecutive IIHF World Junior Championship skating for Team Canada. Cozens posted nine points (2+7) in a subdued role for the tournament champion Canadian team last year and will play a larger role this year. Joining him on the squad is Buffalo's 2020, eighth-overall pick Jack Quinn. There were questions concerning Quinn and whether or not he'd make the team but he did and early projections have him skating in a top-six role for the high-profile, talent-laden Canadians.

In addition to those two forwards, it was announced today that defenseman Ryan Johnson has made Team U.S.A. Johnson, a 2019 first round pick (31st-overall) plays in the NCAA for the Minnesota Golden Gophers. 

Sabres scouting staff growing incrementally

Those three draft picks were from an amateur scouting staff that was definitively hacked in the spring as management decided to get more efficient and/or rebuild the scouting department. After going through the 2020 NHL Entry Draft with a skeleton crew, The Buffalo News reported yesterday that Anders Forsberg will rejoin the Sabres as their scout in Sweden. Forsberg had been a scout for the club from 2015-17 and is back in the fold, albeit in more of a "consulting" role, according to the News, while the also wrote that "his work will have a heavy emphasis on video."

Forsberg is the second scout brought in since the spring purge bringing their total to eight. He joins Tristan Musser, who was hired October 7 as both an amateur and pro scout, as new adds under director of scouting Jeremiah Crowe and assistant director Jason Nightingale. 

What was the process used to select high-scoring winger Jack Quinn 8th-overall?

If you've followed the Buffalo Sabres the past decade you had to know that this was a possibility. After a long seven-month off season due to the pandemic and Buffalo's failure to make the expanded playoffs, new Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams stepped up in a virtual setting and made his selection for the 8th-overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft, RW Jack Quinn of the Ottawa 67's.

Quinn was second in the Canadian Hockey League in scoring with 52 goals in 62 games after scoring just 12 goals in 61 games the previous season. The 19 yr. old with a wicked wrist shot scored in many ways and in all situations (5v5, powerplay, shorthanded) while finding those soft spots around the net. At 6'0" 176 lbs. Quinn has a projectable frame and if he continues to put in the work, which he has diligently done recently, he should be physically ready to begin his NHL journey next fall.

Most were aware of Quinn's meteoric rise last season and he was considered a mid to upper-mid first round pick at the draft. That Buffalo took him at No. 8 was a surprise in most circles and was met with mixed emotions in Sabreland and beyond.

With the board unfolding the way it did as two defensemen were taken top-six, the Sabres were looking at selecting a very nice player at No. 8 including the possibility of drafting two centers--Marco Rossi and Cole Perfetti--who many believed would be gone by the time Buffalo made their pick. After the New Jersey Devils selected a sniper in winger Alexander Holtz, it seemed as if Sabreland was facing a simple situation of taking sides between Rossi and Perfetti with neither really being a bad pick. When Adams selected Quinn, Sabreland devolved into two different groups of those who got that sinking feeling and those who were on the side of hope that the new GM had done well.

Quinn is "a pure sniper" according to Kyle Woodlief, chief scout and publisher of the Red Line Report, a premier draft guide. In his analysis of Buffalo's pick for USA Today Woodlief called Quinn an "aggressive winger...[who] has a knack for sifting through the wash and winding up in dangerous scoring territory without being noticed." 

Corey Pronman of The Athletic had Quinn rated 16th amongst prospects writing that although he didn't call him "an elite sniper, Quinn is just super skilled and smart player who scored a lot of goals around that net." Pronman nailed it in his final mock draft where he had the Sabres selecting him. "Trying to figure out the Sabres has been tough with the moving pieces from new management coming in," he wrote, "but the two names I've heard most are the two Ottawa forwards in Quinn and Rossi. I've been hearing Quinn more often now and think he could be the pick."

Which makes a lot of sense. Most thought Rossi, who led the CHL with 120 points (39+81) in 56 games would be off the board when the Sabres picked so leaning towards Quinn was a matter of elimination. What caused Adams to take the second best player on that 67's team?

"Jack's a Sabre," said Adams right off the bat in a Zoom call after the first round and he went on to credit his scouting staff with giving him insight into Quinn's entire game. "[It's] not just the goal scoring," said Adams, "his overall game kept showing through as we did the work. We see the ability for him to keep getting better, his athleticism is high and just the metrics we use scouting he met, and then some."

When asked what he meant by "Jack's a Sabre" Adams said "he was looking for certain characteristics, whether it's on the ice and the process they use to get their results. You're talking about the competitiveness, the athleticism, some of the measurables...when you package it all together, we felt he was a Sabre."

Whatever those measurables were, the analytical side of the equation didn't seem to be foremost in Adams' thoughts. Jeremiah Crowe was promoted by Adams three months ago to be the head scout of the pro and amateur departments in Buffalo. In an interview posted on the Sabres website the 34 yr. old Crowe called it "a unique opportunity knowing what's been laid out by Kevyn's vision...the buzzwords being analytics, video and scouting." 

We didn't really hear Adams mention anything from an analytics standpoint last night. Instead he offered up a general thoughts on numbers, which is somewhat expected as no GM will get into specifics. As the call unfolded he seemed to focus on Quinn's journey as a determining factor along with his goal-scoring prowess and all around play. Adams said he "really dug in with his scouts to understand [Quinn's] path" which is one of a dogged determination to get to this point. That path included being cut numerous times in triple-A and also his rookie season in the OHL. Quinn had never worked out in the summers as a 15 or 16 yr. old opting to play competitive golf and other sports, but once he got with a trainer, his path to the draft ramped up.

"We interviewed him and he had a lot of interesting answers to the questions I personally asked him," said Adams of Quinn. "He has a really good self-awareness of who he is as a player and he also has a determination in that I see him getting better and better. He's got that growth-mindset kind of mentality where you can see he wants to get better and he was upset when he was younger that he didn't feel he was where he wanted to be as a hockey player. Then he started doing thing to help him improve. To me you see that trajectory, that arc.

"He's got a big ceiling."

On the call Adams seemed to bypass what he's been preaching the last seven months. From what he conveyed during the Zoom call, this didn't seem as if it was an analytics-driven pick and from just looking at comparative stats from Rossi and Quinn, two players on the same team, it looks like a reach as they seemed to have bypassed a "best player available" approach and drafted for a position of need. How much of a reach, if it is at all, is to be determined.

Quinn seems like a really good player with plenty of upside and no doubt Buffalo could use some scoring on the wing. In my mock I surmised that they'd select Holtz with the eighth-overall ahead of Perfetti. It will be a couple years, at least, before we see how Adams' first draft pick unfolds and both sides of the Quinn pick have legit arguments as to why or why not this was the best pick for the Buffalo Sabres. The initial reaction here that of disbelief enveloped in that sinking feeling. And to repeat, it's not that Quinn is a bad prospect, but when a fan base has been subjected to mismanagement for years, they have every right to feel skeptical when a consensus mid-first round pick gets taken at No. 8 ahead of two consensus top-six picks, one being his own teammate who led the CHL in scoring. Having said that I, like 99.9% of those reading this don't have access to the information the Sabres scouting department has, so this writer defers.