As the Stanley Cup Finals wind down this week, it’s a good time to take one last look at our local team, the Buffalo Sabres, and try to figure out what they need to do to take the next step and advance in the playoffs next season. Lindy Ruff will be back as coach, and perhaps be under more pressure to produce than he has been in his entire tenure here. The team had an excellent regular season, winning the Northeast Division title and qualifying for the playoffs for the first time in 3 years. The team seemed to be built for success in the post-season, just like Sabres’ teams of the recent past under Ruff. They had solid goaltending, balanced scoring, great penalty-killing ability and played a tight defensive game for the most part, posting a 31-0 record when leading after 2 periods. Then everything came unraveled in the opening round series against Boston. In trying to decipher what the Sabres need to tweak in order to continue to build on this season, I would suggest looking at the teams that have had success in this year’s playoffs, including the bottom 3 seeds in the Eastern Conference, and what they have in common. Two things jump out at me – each of those teams has a dominant, physical defenseman and each has at least one player with some past Stanley Cup success on their roster. The Chicago Black Hawks have a pair of young, tough defensemen in Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook and have gotten significant contributions from fourth-line center John Madden, who helped win Cups in New Jersey. The Philadelphia Flyers have a two-fer, Chris Pronger, an intimidating defenseman with Cup experience, a player with Cup experience (even though he’s never won one) in Danny Briere and a coach who has won in Peter Laviolette. Look at the two other Eastern teams who had surprising success – Montreal had Hal Gill on the blue line and Brian Gionta (another former Devil) scoring timely goals, Boston surprised the Sabres with some great play from Zdeno Chara on defense and clutch plays from veteran Mark Recchi, who at 41 has had a wealth of playoff success. The Sabres have a potential dominating defenseman in rookie Tyler Myers but he needs to grow physically. That seems strange to say since he’s 6’8 but he needs to fill out, become stronger and develop a mean streak. If he does that and continues to improve his game with experience, with his skating ability he could become THE dominating defenseman in the NHL. The Sabres found a couple of potential gems in the playoffs in Tyler Ennis and Nathan Gerbe and I see them having regular roles with this team all next season. There will surely be subtractions from the roster also. I have to believe Tim Connolly’s days are numbered. He disappeared in the playoffs and has been a major underachiever, mostly because of injuries, in his time here. The team’s front office seems to love him for some reason, perhaps because they still feel the need to justify the Michael Peca trade from years ago, in which Connolly was the main player aquired. Craig Rivet, the captain, will probably also be gone, and the team needs to figure out where young defenseman Chris Butler fits in. As for who becomes the new captain if Rivet leaves, the job should go to Mike Grier or maybe Paul Gaustad. One possibility might be to name Derek Roy captain. He is a talented player who also was invisible in the playoffs and naming him captain might be a good way to force him to take a leadership role on the team. As for possible free agent additions to the team, there are some interesting names on the list of potential free agents – aging guys like Bill Guerin, Recchi, Kirk Maltby, Tomas Holmstrom, Doug Weight and Madden, some younger possibilities with Stanley Cup experience – Alex Tanguay and Petr Sykora. An interesting name on the list of free agent defensemen is Jay McKee. Bringing back Grier turned out to be a great move, so resigning McKee, who was a warrior when he played here, might help the team. Let’s hope that Darcy Regier doesn’t stand pat with the current roster, since it appears that both Boston and Montreal have surpassed the Sabres in the division. With Ottawa being a regular Buffalo nemesis and Toronto sure to show some improvement, standing pat won’t cut it.
