BUFFALO, N.Y. — Now that Devon Levi has made his NHL debut, I think people can more understand why Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams didn’t want to trade for a goalie. I had more than one fan tell me that Adams is incompetent and should be fired because he didn’t trade for a goalie at the NHL trade deadline.
I don’t know why that was so shocking to people because Adams has stated his plan over and over again and it always included developing their own players and not blocking their way to the NHL.
Adams has known all along what we’re just now getting a glimpse of from Levi. We’re getting to see how he prepares to be a goalie. Levi isn’t just a guy who plays the goalie position it’s who he is. Whether he makes it big or not the thing we all know now is he’s all in and he spends most of his time figuring out how he's going to not only make it, but be the best.
His perspective is refreshing. He’s not worried about Artemi Panarin being all alone in the slot in a 2-2 game. He actually wants that to happen, because he wants to be tested by the best.
On his first day in Buffalo you could see a confident, but not arrogant player. After one game it was very obvious on the ice too. He was just spectacular and got a 3-2 overtime victory over the NHL’s sixth best team, the New York Rangers.
Many experts feel Levi is a can’t miss prospect and the chances of him being great are pretty good, but I would caution, don’t get carried away by one game or even what you see to the end of this season. Sure, I’ve been saying for over a year that when it’s all said and done, Levi is going to be the guy that is Buffalo’s starter and I still believe that, but a lot can happen on the way.
Erik Portillo believed that too so the Sabres 2019 third-round pick told Adams that he wouldn’t be signing in Buffalo. Adams quickly retrieved that pick by trading Portillo to the Los Angeles Kings for a third-round pick.
I hope nobody is giving up on Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen yet. These days in the NHL you need two goalies and Luukkonen has shown signs of improvement. He’s also been wildly inconsistent, but you don’t give up on a 24-year-old goalie that has only played 46 NHL games. Most of his numbers are below average, but he also gives his team a chance to win as he’s 17-11-4 this season. Yes, he’s going to need to improve quite a bit to stick in the NHL, but it took Linus Ullmark six years of development before he emerged.
So what’s next for Levi? The Florida Panthers felt Levi was expendable because they foolishly signed Sergei Bobrovsky to a free agent contract and also drafted Spencer Knight with the 13th overall pick in 2019. Stop and think for a moment, Levi wants to face the best players and the best challenges. Tuesday in Florida, the Sabres are in a must win situation if they want to stay in the playoff race. I’m thinking Levi might want the challenge of facing the team that didn’t want him anymore more than facing Panarin alone in the slot. This kid will not get his confidence destroyed, so what do you have to lose? I bet Levi is just hoping he can say, “Challenge accepted."