Lindy Ruff conceded this week that Sabres captain and star defenseman Rasmus Dahlin wasn’t 100 percent healthy to start the season.
Dahlin left the Sabres’ first practice of training camp with what Ruff described as a mid-body injury and returned six days later. He’s played in every game this season but only has two points in eight games. He’s had two or fewer shots on net in six of Buffalo’s eight games. That’s a stark difference from the production he’s had the last few seasons.
Ruff has liked the way Dahlin has played in the last couple of games, though. In a win over the Blackhawks, Ruff pointed to the speed with which Dahlin came up the ice and the way he broke the puck out. After Buffalo’s win over Dallas on Tuesday, Ruff said it was Dahlin’s best game. He narrowly missed scoring a goal, had nine shot attempts and five shots on goal, matching a season high. Ruff said Dahlin is getting closer to 100 percent and also getting used to some of the system changes Ruff has implemented, too.
“Some of the opportunities he gets will be a little bit different than the opportunities he’s gotten in the past,” Ruff said.
Dahlin’s underlying statistics aren’t bad, either. He leads all Sabres defensemen with a 58 percent expected goal share at five-on-five while also leading the team in ice time. He also leads Buffalo defensemen with 14 shots on net at five-on-five (third on the team). Tage Thompson is the only Sabres player with more shot attempts at five-on-five.
Dahlin is trending in the right direction. But the Sabres need more than promising advanced metrics from a player who makes $11 million per year and is the captain of the team. They need him to change games. He’s quarterbacking the top unit of the league’s only scoreless power play. He’s also had some untimely turnovers and hasn’t been as physical as we’ve seen him in the past. Health is a legitimate explanation, but he also laid a low hip check on Peyton Krebs and started a fight in practice last week, so he must not be too seriously injured. Dahlin hasn’t used the injury as an excuse and is the first to say he needs to be better after Buffalo’s losses. At this point, it’s still too early to worry about the Sabres’ star defenseman.
Here are some other Sabres notes, stats and thoughts from this week.
1. At least Ruff has a sense of humor about Buffalo’s 0-for-22 power play.
“I liked what we set up,” Ruff said after the Sabres’ win against the Stars. “I thought we had two or three good looks. It will come. We’ll get one by the end of the year.”
The fact that Ruff is loose about the power play is probably a good sign. For a team that struggled to maintain its confidence last season, there’s little use in having players on the power play overthinking things. In the first few games of the season, the Sabres could barely get the power play set up because of zone-entry issues.
The Sabres are still the only team in the NHL without a power-play goal, but there have been some encouraging signs with the zone entries in the last couple of games. The Sabres have 13 shots on net and 12 scoring chances in their seven power plays in the last three games. But in half their games this season, the Sabres have generated one or zero scoring chances on the power play. This heat map illustrates one of Buffalo’s biggest issues with the man advantage.
Ruff said at the start of the season he wanted the team to win more puck battles and get more dirty goals on the power play. To do that, the Sabres need better play in front of the net. Here’s the visual of where the Sabres’ shots are coming from, courtesy of HockeyViz.
The good news is the Sabres’ next game is against the Red Wings on Saturday at 1 p.m. Detroit’s penalty kill has been dreadful to start the season. In terms of expected goals against per 60, shot attempts against per 60 and high-danger shot attempts per 60, the Red Wings are last in the league on the penalty kill. Maybe this matchup and that the Sabres are wearing their red and black alternates for the first time all season will make this a slump-busting game for Buffalo’s power play.
2. Ruff’s clear-headed approach seems to be having an impact on the Sabres. Part of it could be the natural maturation of some of Buffalo’s younger players. But that they were able to take an ugly two-game stretch in Pittsburgh and Columbus and turn the page quickly to get back-to-back wins felt a little different than the Sabres of the last two years. Some of that is the balance Ruff is striking between calling out the team’s issues and not getting caught up in the emotional swings of the results.
“He’s been around for a while, right?” Sabres forward Jordan Greenway said. “There’s probably not a situation that he hasn’t seen. He keeps his composure for sure. He kind of looks at the big picture. It’s easy to focus on the negative. It’s always easy, especially when you’ve had some negatives in the past. It’s always easy to fall into that. He does a really good job of holding guys accountable, calling them out, whatever the case is, but he points out the positives a lot. Like, ‘Yeah, we’ve lost and we’re 0-2 or 1-4, but look this is what we’re doing well. Keep doing that, we’re going to score. We’re good.’ That’s nice. There’s coaches who could come in and just yell at us.”
That’s not to say the Sabres have completely pulled themselves out of their early-season hole, but they are 3-1-1 in their last five games with a chance to get back to .500 with a win over the Red Wings on Saturday.
3. One of Ruff’s goals this offseason was to make this team faster. That was accomplished through some offseason additions but also through the team’s playing style. The early data suggests Buffalo is on its way to being a faster team. According to NHL Edge, the Sabres are in the 92nd percentile in speed bursts over 20 miles per hour and the 96th percentile in skating distance. They were below league average in both categories last season.
“There’s a lot of teams that can’t play with us when we’re skating,” Greenway said.
4. Weird stat of the week: The Sabres started the season 1-4-1 before their recent back-to-back victories. The last time they made the playoffs was the 2010-11 season. Their record through six games that season? 1-4-1. That team didn’t get back to .500 until January. These Sabres may not want to wait that long.
Here’s another stat for the road: If the Sabres win on Saturday, they will have three straight wins. They had a winning streak of three games just once all of last season.