Over their last seven games, but the Buffalo Sabres scored just six goals, all by only two players. This season, they’re by far the least threatening offensive team in the league, and even moreso now that they’ve traded away Thomas Vanek, Matt Moulson and Steve Ott. How bad are they? For the season, the Sabres have scored 127 goals in 69 games for a goals per game ratio of 1.84 – and they’re 40 total goals behind the 29th place team, Vancouver. Yeah, it’s bad.
In order to wrap our heads around this type of total offensive utility, today let’s take a look at how many games it’s been since each player on the Sabres has scored a goal. This chart does not acknowledge games missed due to injury, but does count games from a previous team for those players traded to Buffalo.
A few things about this chart that jump out at me: the Sabres only have four players with double-digit goals, and one of them (Stewart) scored all his goals as a member of the St. Louis Blues. On the flip side, the Sabres have an astonishing 10 players with two or fewer goals – over half of the Buffalo roster has scored two, one, or zero times the entire season.
The Sabres also have nine players who haven’t scored in the past 20 or more games, led by Ville Leino and Mike Weber, each with at least 50 games and no goals. Henrik Tallinder scored both his goals in back-to-back games way back in 2013, and hasn’t scored at any other time this season. Yes, most of the players with this dubious honor are defensive defensemen or third/fourth liners, but any hockey team is going to have problems if they go 25 games without a goal from their fourth line or the back end of the defense.
We’re not here to blame any one person for the Sabres’ offensive drought, because as this chart hopefully shows, their offensive ineptitude is a full-team effort. The good news is that most of the players who are scoring are the ones who will still be around in two or three years, and most of those who aren’t scoring are likely just bodies filling out the roster until the rebuild gets a bit further along.
Buffalo’s opponent tonight, Edmonton, ranks 28th in the league in goals against – think anybody breaks their scoreless streak tonight?