The Buffalo Sabres’ power play is in its walk-before-you-can-run stage.
The Sabres started the season 0 for 22 with the man advantage, a particular downer when you consider the team’s standing in the NHL’s top 10 teams thus far for scoring at 5 on 5.
But even without goals, the power play finally has started to find some grounding. Better offensive zone entries and puck retrievals in the zone are creating more shots and scoring chances. And lo and behold, veteran Jason Zucker has scored a power-play goal in each of the last two games, so the Sabres can continue to hone their attack without the mental anvil of that 0-fer being a talking point.
Jason Zucker celebrates his power-play goal against the Panthers during the second period at KeyBank Center on Monday.
The Sabres, who were off Wednesday, entered the night 2 for 29 for the season and last in the NHL at 6.9%, but starting to feel a tad better. They’ve had 12 shots on goal on the power play the last two games and more lucky bounces, like Zucker’s mid-air whack for a goal in Monday’s 5-2 loss to Florida, will help the mental side.
“It’s simplicity, shooting pucks. I think we’ve had a shooting mentality,” Zucker said. “If you look at our goal (Saturday against Detroit), I think we had six or seven shots or opportunities with puck recoveries. (Monday), it started off of a shot after JJ (Peterka) had a great jump off the faceoff. We lose that faceoff, but he does a heck of a job getting that puck back for us. It’s a shooting mentality, a lucky whack and the puck goes in.”
First-year assistant coach Seth Appert, tasked with improving the power play this season after it finished 29th last year, immediately entered the muck but said he’s felt better about practice.
“I believe in the process,” Appert said. “And if you’re doing things right in practice, and they’re doing things right in games, results will come ... if you don’t get discouraged by the current results or the current state you’re in.”
How much is having a dragging power play hurting the Sabres?
Entering Wednesday’s play, there were 16 teams – exactly half the NHL – carrying a power play over 20%. Winnipeg was the leader at an eye-popping 44.4% (12 of 27) while Ottawa was at 42.9% and Colorado (36.4), Vegas (33.3) and New Jersey (30) were at or above 30%.
The only teams below 10% are Toronto (9.4), Washington (7.4) and the Sabres. And yes, it’s hard to believe a talented team like the Leafs and a Capitals club that includes Alex Ovechkin can be that low on the power play as well.
“You worry always about the psyche of the players,” Appert said. “Being a coach that’s coached at a lot on development levels, I’ve seen that before. When you’re coaching the US national team in the ‘U-17’ year, the amount of failure before success is just crazy. But if you believe in what you’re doing, and the players are bought into what they need to do, I do believe that results are going to come.”
The Sabres’ top unit, run by Rasmus Dahlin and featuring Zucker, Peterka, Tage Thompson and Dylan Cozens, has turned up the heat in recent games. The second unit (Owen Power, Bowen Byram, Jordan Greenway, Alex Tuch and Jack Quinn) has been getting much less of the ice time and hasn’t been nearly as threatening of late in the offensive zone.
The Sabres struggled with the entries at the start of this year, particularly in the two games in Prague against New Jersey and the home opener against Los Angeles. They were 0 for 11 in those three games, a big reason they lost them all. Appert revealed the club’s internal analytics showed they were 31st in the league last year on loose puck recoveries at 5 on 4 and has emphasized that point, with improvement this year on puck battles and entries helping the last few games.
“The coaches have given us a lot of information on that and a lot of time to work on it,” Cozens said. “We’ve watched a lot of video and our entries are better. We’re getting better chances. And as you saw, we getting some bounces finally. Just try to not get too frustrated and we’re getting better looks.”
“What’s always on your mind is making sure you don’t overcoach,” Appert said. “We spend hours and hours and hours combing through video: Our own, opponents and tendencies and opponent goaltenders and all this stuff to boil down to what is necessary to share. So the players have enough information to know what’s coming at them, but not so much that it bogs them down mentally. That’s probably the biggest thing I tried to remind myself of.”
Trailing 3-2 early in the third period Monday, the Sabres had six shot attempts and three shots on goal on a power play. They didn’t score, but the hope is those kind of forays can continue to drive play.
“Even if you don’t score and we get a lot of chances, it does create momentum,” Cozens said. “Our retrievals have been better, which allows us to roll over shots and just keep getting chances back to back to back. And they’ll start going in more often.”
