BUFFALO, N.Y. — Now that the Sabres seem to have straightened themselves out for a while, I think they’ll start trying things.
Casey Fitzgerald got his first chance to play in the NHL on Friday, and he showed he may have a promising future with the Sabres. Mix him in with Rasmus Dahlin, Henri Jokiharju, Jacob Bryson, Mattias Samuelsson, Owen Power and Ryan Johnson, Buffalo looks to have a really good, young blue line on the way. You can even add Oskari Laaksonen in that mix.
Recently drafted defensemen Nikita Novikov and Albert Lyckasen are complete unknowns.
Malcolm Subban recovered from his horrible Sabres debut in Carolina to make 45 saves against the Penguins on Friday and stealing a point out of Pittsburgh.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen was forced into action when Dustin Tokarski went into COVID-19 NHL protocols, and he seems to have claimed Buffalo’s No. 1 job. Craig Anderson is month-to-month, and we don’t even know if we’ll see him again this year.
In five games Luukkonen has played well enough to be 5-0, but he’s 2-2-1 with a 1.96 goals against and .939 save percentage. Even when Tokarski gets back, I get the sense that Luukkonen and Subban will take the reins.
The reason I think that is, it's because I think that’s what Don Granato and Kevyn Adams want to see. I think they would love to see that as Buffalo’s tandem next season. That would allow them to get Devon Levi or Erik Portillo to leave school early to be Rochester’s goaltender next year.
I don’t think they want both to come out at the same time. It looks to me like Levi is more ready, despite being a year younger than Portillo.
Granato is not afraid to experiment with things, and seeing if Luukkonen and Subban can carry the load is something I think he’d love to see. With the recent Omicron COVID-19 variant, I think it would be smart to have three goalies around.
With so many teams being put on pause, it wouldn’t surprise me if the NHL returns with some sort of a taxi squad. I really can’t see the NHL pausing the season for a long length of time, maybe right before Christmas, but not for months.
Granato has spoken a lot about how much he likes Brett Murray. I think Murray should’ve made the team out of training camp. He picked up seven points in nine games with the Amerks and has played well enough to not only stay, but show that he may be a piece of the puzzle once the team grows into what it wants to be.
As the season goes on, I think we’ll see more experimenting. Some of the guys we could see for a few games or more are Power, Johnson, Samuelsson, Jack Quinn, J.J. Peterka and Peyton Krebs.