11 Thoughts on the Sabres: Reason for optimism?

Buffalo Sabres hockey is back and that means another season of 11 Thoughts on the Sabres.

The slate is clean and those thoughts of “maybe they surprise us all” start to slowly creep into the back of our minds. Well, let’s see if there’s any credence to that:

1. Models love the Sabres
While Vegas is a bit hesitant to be bullish on the Buffalo Sabres this season, a lot of other projection models are somewhat higher than fan expectations for the Buffalo Sabres. Check out this graphic via JFresh below:

Four of the models have the Sabres in a playoff spot. Evolving-Hockey and Brendan Wadlow both have them comfortably in a playoff spot with 99 and 98 points respectively. Outside of the betting odds, the remaining models all have the Sabres within 5 points of a playoff spot.

So it’s not completely delusional to think “maybe there’s a chance” this season.

2. Colten Ellis: Is there something here?
The Sabres claimed goaltender Colten Ellis from the St. Louis Blues on Monday. This led to Alexander Georgiev being placed on waivers after a not so great preseason for Buffalo. So that means Ellis will officially be the Sabres backup goalie to start the season.

As someone who is typically a Sabres waiver claim hater, I kind of like this move. Ellis is a 25-year-old goalie with zero NHL games, but he has been very solid in the AHL the past two seasons.

Ellis posted a .924 SV% in 42 AHL games for Springfield last season. The other goalie in Springfield’s tandem, Vadim Zherenko, had an .897 SV% in 32 games. It is not a perfect science to compare one goalie to their teammate, but they are playing with the same team in front of them and there is a fairly sizable gap between their results.

Ellis also had a nice preseason, stoping all 24 shots and 1.46 expected goals against he faced:

3. More goals in 2025/26
There are two players that I think can really improve their goal outputs in 2025/26: Zach Benson and Josh Doan. Zach Benson scored 10 goals on 19.3 expected goals last season. Josh Doan had 7 goals on 14.1 expected goals.

Certainly not a great display of finishing ability, but both players were getting their shots off from somewhat dangerous areas. Finishing from those areas can be something that improves with experience.

Both players are fairly new to the NHL level, so they’ll have another season to work on their timing and placement of their shots. I like both of these players as bets to outperform their goal totals from last season, they’ll certainly be given the opportunity to.

4. Coming out the gates hot
The Sabres have gone 1-3-0 after in their first four games the past two seasons. They also had embarrassing opening night performances the past two seasons with an ugly 5-1 loss to the Rangers and a deflating 4-1 loss to the Devils in Prague.

A little known fact is that games are worth the same amount of points in October as they are in March. We’ve seen how airtight most of the models are with the middle-of-the-pack in the Eastern Conference this season, every point will matter this season.

A win or even just some urgency shown by this team in their opening game would certainly be a breath of fresh air.

5. Radim Mrtka: WHL or AHL?
The Sabres’ 2025 1st round pick was sent to Rochester after a preseason with many positive moments from the young Czech blueliner. However, the WHL still appears to be an option for Mrtka according to Amerks head coach Mike Leone:

My take: I believe sending Mrtka to wherever he gets the most ice time and opportunities will be the best place for his development. And that very well could be the WHL at this stage.

6. The Big Parm Thompson
If there’s anything the Sabres have enjoyed more than missing the playoffs, it’s two-foot long food items. They now have a two-foot long chicken parm sandwich called ‘The Big Parm Thompson’.

7. Home Opener: A surprise sellout?
You know after all of the advertising the Sabres did for tickets this offseason, especially for the home opener, I was a little concerned about the turnout on opening night. But a quick glance at Ticketmaster shows this game is fairly close to being a sellout and will likely be a sellout by game time.

The fans are ready for this Buffalo Sabres season and hopefully the team gives them a performance that makes them return.

8. Norris-Thompson connection
I don’t think anyone was impressed by Josh Norris in a Sabres uniform to end last season. 2 points in 3 games followed by missing the final month of the season due to an injury. Somewhat concerning for a player who has been known to be injury prone.

But he’s been healthy this entire training camp and he put together a nice preseason scoring 7 points to match Tage’s 7 points scored on his wing. I firmly believe in taking preseason stats with a grain of salt, but I will file this away in the “nice to see” category as we head into this season.

Toss a space creator and forechecker like Zach Benson on the opposite wing and this could be a legitimately good hockey line. Josh Norris having a career year would be massive for this Sabres team’s ceiling and this could be the perfect environment for him to do so.

9. Injuries clearing up

Jordan Greenway, Michael Kesselring, and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen will remain on injured reserve. Zach Benson, Owen Power, and Mattias Samuelsson appear to be good to go for opening night. Benson and Power returning allow the Sabres to not have to shuffle lines too much which is massive.

10. Justin Danforth: The long road here
The 32-year-old Justin Danforth, who the Buffalo Sabres signed from the Columbus Blue Jackets, is set to make his debut in the blue and gold. The crazy thing is that he was in the Sabres minor league system on an AHL contract back in 2017/18.

After a four-year career at Sacred Heart, Danforth bounced around the ECHL and AHL where he played 20 games for the Rochester Americans and 44 games for the Sabres’ ECHL affiliate, the Cincinnati Cyclones.

After an impressive ECHL campaign at 25 years old, he signed with Lukko in Finland where he was close to a point-per-game player for two seasons. He followed that up with a season in Russia for Vityaz Podolsk of the KHL where he put up 55 points in 58 games.

The following season in 2021/22 he signed his first NHL contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets and made his NHL debut at 28 years old. 183 NHL games later and he is back in the Sabres system, this time as an NHL player. Definitely cool to see.

11. Big wins for local college hockey
Going to close out this season’s first edition of 11 Thoughts out by giving props to Western New York’s local Division 1 hockey programs.

Canisius opened the season with two wins over two ECAC schools: Clarkson and St. Lawrence. Niagara also picked up a win over St. Lawrence. Maybe the changing college hockey landscape can be a good thing for these two programs.

With the season kicking off today, we’d like to also give a huge thanks to Picasso’s Pizza, who are returning as our primary brand sponsor for the 2025-26 season.

Picasso’s helps us support our staff who spend hours of their free time doing this out of nothing but passion for hockey and the Sabres — they’ve got a TON of amazing deals running, so grab yourself some pizza and you’ll help support our brand as well.

We’re stoked for what this season holds! Thank you to everyone for reading and make sure to follow along with us on X/Twitter and Instagram.