Buffalo Sabres’ Biggest Draft Busts by Decade

Nobody quite knows why, but Titanic just didn’t click at the professional ranks. After two solid seasons in the American Hockey League, he debuted for the Sabres during their legendary 1974-75 campaign but went pointless in 17 games. He returned for two games the following season but also failed to register a point and he never saw the NHL again, spending the remainder of his career in the minors. His playing days came to a premature end in 1980 thanks to a knee injury, and he hung them up at just 27 years old. Ironically, Titanic’s legacy may have been forged after his retirement, as he became a mainstay on the Sabres’ Alumni Team for years.

The 1980s: Joel Savage – 13th Overall, 1988

The latter half of the 1980s saw the first true struggles that the Sabres franchise ever experienced, finishing last in the NHL in 1987. However, the selection of future Hall of Famer Pierre Turgeon first overall helped rejuvenate the team and the hope was that their first-round pick the following year would have a similar impact. Buffalo selected Joel Savage 13th overall in 1988 after he posted 73 points in just 37 games with the Western Hockey League’s Victoria Cougars that season. Unfortunately for them, that proved to be as good as it got.

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Though he joined the Rochester Americans for the 1989-90 season, the winger was never able to capture that same magic again and failed to impress. He debuted for Buffalo during the 1990-91 season, recording an assist in three games. He was returned to the Amerks afterwards and, like Titanic, never saw the NHL again, spending the next 13 seasons in various other leagues in both North America and Europe. In Savage’s defense, the Sabres didn’t give him much of an opportunity to make an impact, but at the exact same time, perhaps he never truly earned it.

The 1990s: Barrett Heisten – 20th Overall, 1999

Though some of the names on this list are undoubtedly obscure even to the most diehard of Sabres fans, Barrett Heisten still may be in a league of his own. After their crushing and controversial defeat in the ultimate Stanley Cup Final of the 20th century, the Sabres aimed to keep their positive momentum going at the 1999 Draft and used the 20th overall pick to take the 6-foot, 192-pound winger of the University of Maine Black Bears. The Alaska native certainly fit the physical template of the Sabres at the time but he never had the chance to contribute.

Nobody knows why, but Buffalo never officially brought Heisten aboard and the New York Rangers signed him as a free agent in 2001 after his rights expired. It’s true that the Sabres were in a good place at that time and weren’t exactly desperate for new talent, but it begs the question of why they wasted such a prominent selection on a player that they evidently never had the intention of using. Heisten saw 10 games of NHL action with the Rangers during the 2001-02 campaign and then spent the next six seasons between the AHL and ECHL before retiring in 2008. He helped his hometown team, the Alaska Aces, win the ECHL’s Kelly Cup in 2006.

The 2000s: Marek Zagrapan – 13th Overall, 2005

The 2005 Draft might have been the strangest in NHL history. After the 2004-05 Lockout cancelled that entire season (the first such occurrence in the history of North American sports), the league used a weighted lottery system to determine the draft order and the Sabres found themselves with the 13th overall pick, exactly where they had been the season before. With it, they selected Marek Zagrapan of the Quebec Major Junior League’s Chicoutimi Sangueneens, the franchise’s first-ever Slovak first-round pick. However, like Heisten, the Sabres never incorporated him.

The Sabres were fresh off the 2005-06 season that may have been their greatest ever and also weren’t starved for new names at the time, but it’s also curious why Zagrapan was never brought on. Fans who know his name may think that the Slovak never impressed enough, but that actually isn’t true. He posted three solid seasons in the AHL but the Sabres evidently never noticed and he returned to Europe in 2009 citing a lack of opportunity, and frankly, it’s hard to blame him. It’s doubtful that Zagrapan would have had an extensive effect on the franchise, but why did former general manager Darcy Regier have such a propensity for wasting his draft picks?

The 2010s: Mikhail Grigorenko – 12th Overall, 2012

Well, you knew this one was coming. We all know that the 2011-12 season was the beginning of the end for the Sabres and that a truly unfathomable stretch of futility was to follow, but at the time we didn’t know that and in the summer of 2012 there was still reason for hope. Buffalo narrowly missed the playoffs that season but had two first-rounders at the draft to compensate for it. With the former, they selected Mikhail Grigorenko of the Quebec Remparts. Every horror movie needs a sacrificial first victim, and unfortunately for the Russian, that was him.

The Sabres, perhaps more desperate for a spark than they cared to admit at the time, immediately brought Grigorenko up for the Lockout-shortened 2013 season. However, it was glaringly obvious that he wasn’t ready for such a large role yet and he posted just five points in 25 games, after which he was returned to the Remparts. But it was too late, the damage had been done and the Sabres continued to bungle their top prospect’s development over the next two seasons before finally pulling the plug in 2015 and trading him to the Colorado Avalanche as part of the return for superstar Ryan O’Reilly.

Again, it’s debatable how much of an impact Grigorenko actually would have had on the Sabres given where they were at the time, but he truly feels like a tragic victim, especially considering that Zemgus Girgensons (drafted two spots behind him) experienced a markedly different fate. Grigorenko is a microcosm of the Sabres’ failures under the Pegula regime, which is probably why they want you to forget his name.

Since we’re only halfway through the 2020s, it’s too early to consider anyone drafted within the last four years a bust so we’ll hold off on judgement for now. But which of these men do you think was Buffalo’s biggest draft bust ever, or do you consider it someone else not covered here?