Absolutely nobody saw this coming.
Back on Feb. 28, the Buffalo Sabres were sitting a full 14 points back of the Detroit Red Wings in the Eastern Conference playoff race. With many of their key players struggling to produce (and their defense looking a bit leaky), the Sabres appeared destined to miss the playoffs for a 13th consecutive season.
Well, not so fast. The Sabres have won back-to-back games, including a 7-3 stunner on Tuesday over those very same Red Wings, to crawl within five points of the final Eastern Conference playoff spot.
The player at the forefront of their recent push is none other than Bowen Byram, who arrived in Buffalo just last week in a completely unexpected one-for-one swap with the Colorado Avalanche that saw Casey Mittelstadt the other way.
Mittelstadt immediately made a lot of sense as an Avalanche trade target. He’s a productive and highly touted center who should slot in pretty well as their No. 2 center behind Nathan MacKinnon going forward, and he picked up his first goal as an Av in Tuesday’s 6-2 win over the Calgary Flames.
But the Sabres’ side of the deal didn’t quite compute right away. Byram is a skilled young defenseman who played a huge role in the Avalanche winning the Stanley Cup in 2022, but he’s dealt with significant health problems during his young career and, curiously, is yet another left-handed defender on a Sabres team stocked with them.
Between Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, Mattias Samuelsson, and Byram, the Sabres are completely flush with intriguing options who can play the left side, but they’re concerningly low on right-handed options — even if one of Dahlin and Power slides over.
Sabres head coach Don Granato seems to have solved that problem in a big way. There’s a new top pairing in Buffalo, with Byram on the left and Dahlin on the right. And the early returns of their partnership have been nothing less than terrific.
Byram became the first defenseman in Sabres history to score three goals in his first three games with the team when he tallied twice in Tuesday’s blowout win over the Red Wings. But his dominance extended far beyond what went on the board.
With Byram on the ice at 5-on-5 on Tuesday night, the Sabres outshot the Red Wings 18-8 and racked up 13 scoring chances to Detroit’s five. Individually, Byram led all Sabres skaters with six shot attempts for a total of 0.43 expected goals (via Natural Stat Trick).
Byram’s natural gifts are obvious. He’s 6’1″, he moves extremely well, and he’s highly intelligent. He didn’t dominate the 2022 Stanley Cup Final by mistake. When Byram is on, he’s on.
The Sabres had room to bet on Byram flipping that switch with increased opportunity. He’s averaging 24:39 of ice time through his first three games with the Sabres, up from 19:50 in 55 games with Colorado to start the season.
It’s been a marked change in responsibility and performance for a player who has always had the potential to be a top-end defender in this league. Now, it’s just a question of maintaining it over a longer period of time.
The defensive side of the game has long been the Achilles heel of this iteration of the Sabres. It certainly helped that they were able to land Dahlin and Power with top picks three years apart, but it wasn’t enough. Adding Byram might be.
It also bears mentioning how big a role Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen has played in the Sabres’ late-season ascent. The Finnish goaltender has a 9-3-1 record in his last 13 games and is 21-16-3 with a .914 save percentage in 41 games this year. He’s provided much-needed stability at a position in Buffalo that has been short on it in recent years.
But in the end, there isn’t much a goaltender can do without strong defenders in front of him (and vice versa). Byram might just be the missing piece for a Sabres team that has been replete with forwards but short on rearguards for much of the year. Once again, the early returns are encouraging.
Two weeks ago, when we took a look at the Eastern Conference playoff race, Buffalo didn’t even qualify as an honorable mention. Now, even after trading captain Kyle Okposo to the Florida Panthers ahead of the deadline, the Sabres are playing meaningful games in the middle of March. Even if it’s too late for them to make it, the long-suffering fans in Erie County have to be liking what they’re seeing.
The Sabres are staring down games against the New York Islanders on Thursday and Detroit on Saturday. Go figure. Both those teams have 72 points, just five more than Buffalo’s 67. Two more wins could put the Sabres within striking distance of a Wildcard spot.
Buckle up. For the first time in a long time, it’s crunch time in Buffalo — and playoff hockey is on the line. And the man at the forefront of their playoff push already has a Stanley Cup ring on his finger.
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