rangers sabres

The New York Rangers had their eight game winning streak snapped in Dallas last week, but rebounded nicely in Sunrise against the Panthers. Tonight they face the woeful Buffalo Sabres, at home, on the tail-end of back-to-backs. That’s a pretty sweet scenario for the Rangers. So naturally, tonight is a trap game.

The Sabres don’t possess many offensive weapons, they have just two skaters over 20 points thus far this season. Guys signed (or acquired) to at least pretend like they are carrying the offense –Brian Gionta, Matt Moulson, Chris Stewart– are doing the exact opposite. The scoring leaders are some of the kids (Tyler Ennis, Zemgus Girgensons), so that’s a positive sign. Ten guys on the current roster are under 25 years of age as well.

What have they done lately?

The Sabres, despite being a lottery team in possession of three first round picks this year, are not the worst team in the league. The Oilers and Hurricanes have worse records. A four game win streak in December helped them get out of the cellar, but the Sabres are 1-6-1 since that four game win streak.

The Sabres are the worst possession team in hockey. In fact, they are so bad that most pundits omit them from graphical comparisons around the league because they skew the data too much. Here’s what their possession looks like this year with a five-game rolling average:

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Usually I leave the density plot out of these analyses, but man are the Sabres bad. Their average (the dotted line on the bottom graph) is about 38% FF, while most of their games are about 40% FF. The top chart –their rolling five game average– doesn’t even have a 50% break even line. This is a team that is in disarray.

Buffalo is a team you expect to have a low PDO, since their SV% and SH% will be worse than league average. A few bounces here and there mean they can steal a game or two, but this is a team that is so far below the puck possession median and they are so far out of a playoff spot that their PDO is relatively meaningless.

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Buffalo’s Systems:

Ted Nolan has the Sabres running a 1-2-2 forechecking system and try to shut down the middle of the ice. For the defensive zone, he has them playing a zone system pretty much exclusively. On special teams, the Sabres run an 1-3-1 power play and a hybrid penalty kill.

Rangers lineup:

Rick NashDerick BrassardMats Zuccarello
Chris KreiderDerek StepanMartin St. Louis
Carl HagelinKevin HayesLee Stempniak
J.T. MillerDominic MooreJesper Fast

Ryan McDonaghDan Girardi
Marc StaalDan Boyle
John MooreKevin Klein

Henrik Lundqvist is in net tonight.

Scratches/Injuries: Tanner Glass (healthy), Matt Hunwick (healthy)

Be sure to check out our ticket link if you’re looking for tickets to the game.

Game time is 7pm on MSG.

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