It’s no secret that the Buffalo Sabres do not have a high powered offense this season. After being consistently in or near the top 10 in scoring over the past five years, Buffalo is on pace to finish among the bottom 10 teams in goals for this season.
Much of that can be attributed to multiple players having career worst or very sub-par seasons. Names like Drew Stafford, Brad Boyes, and Ville Leino are all players who were counted on to score somewhere between 15 and 30 goals each, and likely won’t reach 30 goals total.
But we’ve all beaten that drum enough already, so let’s talk about a few players who have begun to turn things around in the last four games. Derek Roy has been leading the way, finding his offensive game rejuvenated after being paired with Thomas Vanek and Jason Pominville to form the Sabres’ version of Voltron. Roysie, who is obviously the wisecracking Lance of the Red Lion in this scenario, has put up 7 points (2+5) in his last 4 games while increasing his potential trade value for those of you who are into that kind of thing. Regardless of whether he goes or stays, Roy’s increased production has been a big factor in the Sabres recent mini-turnaround.
Tyler Ennis spent most of the season leading the team in injury report minutes, having only played 26 games this year. However, the diminutive forward has managed to put up 3 points (2+1) in his last 4 games, and scored one of the prettiest goals you’ll see from the Sabres all year on Sunday against Boston. If Ennis isn’t scoring (remember, he put up 20+29 last year) then he’s almost useless thanks to his size and lack of defensive ability, so it’s nice to see him finding his scoring touch again and becoming, you know, useful.
Finally, the Sabres offense takes on a whole new dimension when Tyler Myers is heavily involved, and involved he’s been: over the past 4 games, the big man has 4 points (2+2) thanks to using his fantastic offensive instincts and jumping up into the play to help support the forwards in key situations. He still needs to improve upon his consistency in his third year, and needs to continue to find balance between becoming the mean, shutdown defender that the Sabres need, and the offensive sparkplug they deserve.
If the Sabres are going to have any hope of making the playoffs (and we debated that yesterday) then they’ll need these three players and more to continue to step up to the plate and provide the necessary secondary scoring that this team has been lacking all year.