By Zackery Robert
Next in this series is the Buffalo Sabres. Buffalo has been drafting since 1970 and has over 50 years of drafting experience, both good and bad. Buffalo as of late has been drafting very well, picking up high quality prospects but of course at the cost of having a competitive team. With that, the future of the Buffalo Sabers is one to be excited about.
Taking a look back at some of Buffalo’s most successful draft selections we will start out going all the way back to their first draft back in 1970 when they held the first overall pick and selected from the Montreal Junior Canadiens, Gilbert Perrault. Perrault was an icon in Buffalo, being their first true superstar Perrault spent his entire 17 year career in a Sabres uniform scoring 1326 points in 1191 games. He was a part of the French Connection line in Buffalo and with his style and speed he put the Buffalo Sabres on the map. He is in the Hockey Hall of Fame and was the first player to have his number retired by the Buffalo Sabres on October 17th 1990.
Another top selection for the Buffalo Sabres was that of goaltender Ryan Miller. The American was selected in the fifth round of the 1999 draft and turned out to be the franchise goalie for the Sabres. Miller played 11 of his 18 seasons for the Sabres, and had 284 wins for the franchise. Miller also captured the Vezina in the 2009-2010 season. Miller goes down as the all time winning goalie in Sabres history and capped off his time there with his jersey retirement on January 19th 2023.
This selection of top choice for best pick in franchise history is tough, since 2000 the Sabres have not picked much in the way of top of the league talent. There was Derek Roy and Thomas Vanek, and in the 80s they had a few very good draft picks in Phil Housely, Dave Andreychuk, and Pierre Turgeon but none of these three players played the majority of their careers in Buffalo or had their best season in Buffalo. But in this scenario I would put Phil Housely in this slot but it can be a very debatable decision. Housely was Buffalo’s best defenseman in their history even though it was only for eight seasons. He was a pillar of consistency, in those eight years he never had less than 15 goals and 62 points. In today’s game that would make him top three in Norris trophy votes every year. Housley is one of the highest scoring defenseman and he started out in Buffalo.
Now that we’ve talked about some successful picks we will now move on to picks that are unsuccessful. Starting it off we will go to the 1992 draft where Buffalo chose David Cooper 11th overall. Cooper never even played one game with the Sabres, only playing in parts of three seasons for their AHL team before going to the Leafs. In total Cooper played 30 NHL games amassing 10 points. Not exactly the way they were hoping this pick would pan out. Even more so because three picks later Sergei Gonchar was selected.
Next up to talk about is coming in from the 1986 draft when Buffalo held the fifth overall pick. They chose to select defenseman Shawn Anderson, Anderson split three seasons between the NHL and AHL with the Sabres totalling 113 games for the club with 32 points in that span. He was not what they had hoped for when selecting him, looking up this draft you will find two well known names drafted after him within four picks. Vincent Damphousse who scored over 1200 points in over 1300 games and at ninth you have Brian Leetch, the Hall of Fame defensemen with over 1000 points, a Calder trophy, two Norris trophies, one Conn Smythe trophy and a Stanley Cup ring to match. Buffalo would definitely go back in time if they had the chance to select Leetch again.
For the last pick we’ll talk about we will look at the 2016 draft where Buffalo was eighth up on the podium and chose Alex Nylander. Nylander had a lot of high expectations coming in after his brother looked to be a consistent top six winger for the leafs. Nylander struggled with the Sabres being mainly an AHL player with short stints with the big club. After three failed seasons trying to crack the Sabres roster he was traded away to Chicago where did not fare much better. In total Nylander played in 19 games for the Sabres and scored six points in those games. Three players drafted after Nylander who have had great young careers so far would be Charlie McAvoy drafted 14th, Mikhail Sergachev drafted ninth overall and Jordan Kyrou drafted 35th.
Currently the Sabres roster has now been flooded with top young talent in the likes of Tage Thompson, Rasmus Dahlin, Dylan Cozens, and Owen Power with even more young players beginning to play. Currently Buffalo is on the outside of the playoff race and could look to finish with a pick around 12-15 in the first round. Their total number of draft picks stand at eight with, 1st, 2nd, 2nd (PHI), 3rd (LAK), 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th. So looking at their first pick they could have a good chance at choosing players like Swiss defensemen David Reinbacher, Slovakian centre Dalibor Dvorsky, or another Slovakian centre Samuel Honzek.
For more information on the 2023 NHL Draft class be sure to pick up your copy of the comprehensive DraftPro 2023 NHL Draft Guide.