A full season under a new team, a new coach, and a new mentality can work wonders for a player. For defenseman Bowen Byram, joining the Buffalo Sabres, specifically under head coach Lindy Ruff, could be the turning point the heralded young talent needs. Based on Ruff’s history with defensemen, including one he specifically coached from the Colorado Avalanche, there’s a path for Byram to shine.
Ryan Graves is a big defenseman with a big shot that started his career in the New York Rangers organization. He was traded to the Colorado Avalanche, where he saw his first NHL action. His second full season in Colorado was his best, playing extensively with 21-year-old superstar Cale Makar.
So what does this have to do with Bowen Byram? After three seasons with the Avalanche, he was dealt to the New Jersey Devils due to expansion draft roster shuffling. Graves’ two-season stint in New Jersey under head coach Lindy Ruff was his best with any team. His results plummeted this past season once he moved to Pittsburgh, leaving some uncertainty in his role among the Penguins’ defense corps.
Looking at how Graves thrived, there are some similarities with Byram. Let’s break down how Ruff and the coaching staff could create an environment for Byram to succeed based on usage and style of play.
Byram, Graves Similarities
Let’s set the record straight off the hop – Bowen Byram and Ryan Graves are far from the same defenseman. Graves is a big, strong, pretty mobile defenseman who was a fourth-round selection in the 2013 NHL Draft. Byram was a top prospect, selected fourth overall in 2019, with an exceptional skating and offensive ceiling.
Due to limitations, Graves is cast as more of a supporting player in a top-four defensive pair, while Byram can be a featured player. The two crossed paths in Colorado during the 2020-2021 season, where Graves was losing ice time to newcomer Devon Toews and Byram was breaking into the lineup in a bottom-pair role.
The unique thing about playing defense in Colorado is man-to-man defensive zone coverage. Most NHL teams use some form of zone coverage so that defensemen aren’t chasing the puck carrier out to the blueline. The Avalanche like to use their speed and skating to their advantage, hounding the puck carrier and forcing play to a tracked man.
Besides the system in Colorado, both defensemen are also good shooters. Byram’s a more selective shooter with higher scoring rates than Graves, but their shooting ability is a highlight of their arsenal.
How Ruff Used Graves
Graves was dealt to the Devils for the 2021-2022 season, coming off his worst season with the Avalanche. The rehabilitation was immediate, as Graves jumped from adding only about 0.8 standings points to Colorado above a replacement player to adding 1.9 standings points above replacement to New Jersey, per Evolving-Hockey.
Graves’ second season under Ruff was the best of his career, adding 3.4 standings points above replacement. Providing even-strength offense is where he shined, but the 2022-2023 season also saw a bump in his shorthanded numbers.
Usage
Ruff relied on Graves heavily, deploying him in a top-pair role. The big defenseman went from 19 minutes per game in Colorado to 21 minutes in New Jersey. When Ruff dialed him back slightly in his second Devils season, that’s when the results soared.
So was it the minutes? What else could Ruff have done to get the most out of Graves?
Quality of Competition
It wasn’t by sheltering the blueliner, that’s for sure. Graves’ quality of competition increased greatly with the Devils. He was their primary shutdown defenseman in his first season in New Jersey. In 2022-2023, he split those duties with breakout player Jonas Siegenthaler.
Quality of Teammate
His primary defense partners with the Devils were Dougie Hamilton and Damon Severson. They’re no slouches but neither is Cale Makar, of course. In fact, the teammate quality decreased across the board in New Jersey, so you can’t say Ruff gave him better players to play with.
Understandably so, since the Avalanche were so richly talented, that would’ve been a tall task.
Zone Starts
Simply put, Ruff made Graves a defensive defenseman. In Colorado, Graves averaged about 10% defensive zone starts and 33% of his faceoff situations in the D-zone. Under Ruff, that increased to 14% of his starts in the defensive zone and 36% defensive zone faceoffs.
Compare that to the 9% of starts in the offensive zone and 28.5% of faceoffs in the offensive zone in New Jersey and you can see just how big of a balance shift there was towards defense.
In other words, Ruff correctly identified how to best use Graves within the construct of the team. The big defenseman thrived because of it, giving encouraging signs of what he could have in store for Buffalo’s defense.
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How Byram Fits Under Ruff
Coming off of the worst season of his career, Bowen Byram had negative standings impacts in Colorado and Buffalo, per Evolving-Hockey. His -0.3 standings points impact compared to a replacement-level player for the Avalanche ultimately made him expendable. The Sabres are hoping for much better results after pacing at a -1.3 standings point impact in his 18-game stint last season.
Usage
Byram averaged 19 minutes per game last season in Colorado and slightly less once traded to Buffalo. His most successful run with the Sabres was when he was initially paired with Rasmus Dahlin, making a top-pairing role in the cards.
Given the talent on both ends of the ice that both players have, he could be set for heavy minutes, regardless of the situation.
Quality of Competition
The dropoff from the first few games after his trade to Buffalo last season was obvious, as Byram seemed to regress after the initial jolt of being on a new team. One of the factors that could’ve played into that is that he faced the toughest competition of his entire career while with the Sabres.
He went from playing on the Avalanche’s third pair in a sheltered role to being thrown out against some of the top offensive opponents. Byram picked things back up in the final games of the season, hinting that he might have just needed time to adjust to the difficulty.
Quality of Teammate
To supplement the jump in difficulty faced, his teammate quality dropped to the worst of his career after becoming a part of the Sabres. This shouldn’t come as any surprise, as Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, and Cale Makar outrank any three players the Sabres can deploy at one time.
Being on the third pair, he was experiencing less time with Colorado’s superstars than in the past, which could’ve played a part in his reduced analytical impacts. Still, someone drafted as high as Byram is expected to lift those around him, and he did not do that last season.
The Sabres were completely out of sync this past season, so the entire lineup needs to bounce back. This presumed resurgence could include Byram, who has better underlying numbers in his past suggesting he has plenty more to give.
Zone Starts
Former Sabres head coach Don Granato gave Byram his highest offensive zone faceoff percentage in three seasons, attempting to exploit his attacking ability more than Colorado had. Makar eats up a lot of those situations with the Avalanche, so it’s hard to blame his former team for not doing the same.
Byram’s deployment under Ruff could be similar, especially if he is paired with Dahlin. A Power-Jokiharju pairing would, in theory, eat more defensive zone starts, as would any pair including Mattias Samuelsson or Connor Clifton.
Byram Outlook
Ruff’s coaching tactics and ideas with the Sabres this time around are difficult to predict, as it’s hard to get into the mind of the head coach with only an introductory press conference on record. On top of that, Henri Jokiharju profiles much closer to Graves than Byram, so perhaps he’s the better direct case study.
We’re looking at taking an all-around defenseman and maximizing his situation though, and Bowen Byram fits that beautifully. Ruff has turned many of these defensemen into his most reliable players, such as Toni Lydman, Henrik Tallinder, Jaroslav Spacek, and Alex Goligoski.
The Colorado factor with Graves and Byram also shows that Ruff knows how to fit someone used to man-on-man coverage into his system, giving us a direct correlation to draw from. It’s not always the flashiest defenseman that thrives in Ruff’s system, it’s the steady one that can push the puck up to his forwards consistently.
Bowen Byram has the tools to succeed and has displayed some numbers suggesting he simply needs a better fit. Should Ruff provide the right environment, we could see the former fourth-overall pick finally start to reach his full potential.
