Sabres Top Offseason Target… A Team Doctor?

About halfway through the year, as it became clear that another bad game by the Sabres wasn’t going to be another blemish on the season, but the trend for the season, the calls for a shake-up began. Make a trade. Fire the coach. Fire the GM. Fire the GM, the coach, and make some trades. #DoSomethingDarcy became a top 10 trend on twitter in Buffalo. Even the national hockey analysts acknowledged that something had to change in Buffalo, with Jeremy Roenick commenting in January that, “I think it’s time either that the goaltender gets traded or the coach needs to get fired or they need a new GM but something has to change in Buffalo.”

Even Ruff got rolled.

But then, incredibly, word trickled out that Pegula would sit pat. That he had bought the excuse that the team was underperforming based on unusually bad luck with — injuries. As if injuries weren’t a part of the game for every other team as well, with every week seeming to bring news of another top player losing a week or more with concussions, and Sidney Crosby sitting out virtually the whole season. How could Pegula settle for that? But he did, and with the exception of the three players moving at the trade deadline, Pegula’s team made no dramatic moves.

So, with the Stanley Cup contenders about to get decided tonight or on Sunday, it’s a good time to look back and see how an “injury excuse” really stacked up, not just for the Sabres but for the Eastern Conference and as a predictor of playoff success. How valid was last season’s injury excuse?

Here’s some simple math: Take the 18 point scorers for every team in the Eastern Conference and total up how many games they played in 2011-2012. Not too surprisingly, the healthiest team was the Rangers, with 1274 games from their top 18 players. And yes, the worst was the Sabres, with 1061 games from their top 18. (There might be something here.)

With those two sets of numbers — regular season points, and top 18 skater games — it’s easy to then figure out the rate at which a team would perform with its best players always on the ice. And using that figure — rate of points for best 18 skaters — the Sabres don’t look like nearly as flawed a team as they did for most of the season. In fact, they look about what we expected to see going into the season — a 5th place team (5 points out of first overall), and with a 12 point cushion on 9th place.

With the NHL Draft and Free Agency approaching, perhaps the best offseason acquisition the Sabres can make would be to add some injury luck and a damn good team doctor.