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Prime Years: The void grows bigger as the 2006 draft flops |
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The Buffalo Sabres had a real strong 2005-06 NHL season, making it to within one game of the Stanley Cup Finals. It was wide open first NHL season after the lockout in both the style of play and in the standings. Through tight officiating the league took the clutching, grabbing and hooking out of the game on the ice while off it they also created a competitive balance through the salary cap. The "final four" that year included three "small-market" teams--Buffalo and Carolina in the east and Edmonton in the west--with Carolina defeating Edmonton in the Stanley Cup Finals.
The Sabres surprisingly successful campaign (complete with a bitter end) can be directly related to using the 2004-05 lockout as a way to get their young players playing the type of game they'd be playing on the big club once the lockout was over. The future "core" of the Sabres spent that entire season in Rochester playing for the Amerks and developing a chemistry that would lead the big club to a 52-win, 2005-06 NHL campaign (the first time ever they eclipsed the 50-win mark) and the fifth best record in the league.
The success of the 2005-06 season can be traced in part to player development mostly in the forward ranks as rookies Thomas Vanek and Derek Roy along with Jason Pominville made significant contributions to the big club that season in secondary scoring roles.
The defense was a bit different, however, as the Sabres d-corps was composed of vets who would spend the lockout playing overseas. Three d-men who were in Rochester the entire year--Nathan Paetsch, Doug Janik and Rory Fitzpatrick--are dubiously linked to the Sabres bitter end in the Eastern Conference Finals that season (along with Jeff Jillson) as they were forced into service due to an inordinate number of injuries on the blueline.
Buffalo would enter the 2006 draft stocked with forwards, and with a lack of defensive depth undermining their run to the Cup Finals, the Sabres went into the 2006 draft thinking defense.
In the eight years since 1997, the year Darcy Regier took over as GM of the Buffalo Sabres, the Sabres selected a defenseman in the first round only twice--1998, Dmitri Kalinin (18th overall) and Keith Ballard (2002, 11th.) Kalinin would be a mainstay for the Sabres for seven full seasons beginning in 2000-01 while Ballard was a key piece (one that Regier was forced to part with) in the three-way trade that brought US Hockey Hall of Famer, Chris Drury, to the club in July, 2003.
The next highest defenseman drafted by Buffalo in that eight-year span was at No. 48 where Hank Tallinder (1997) and Gerald Cicaire (2000) were both picked.
Strong skating puck-movers were the defensemen du jour for the Sabres over the course of that era with Tallinder and Kalinin being the foremost examples. As they entered the post lockout 2005-06 season it was players like that, along with the offensive acumen of Brian Campbell, (1997, 156th) that would eventually propel the team to Ferrari-status in the "no-touch NHL." And as Buffalo headed into the 2006 draft with visions of offense from the back-end, as well as the need to add to the defensive pipeline, they looked to Sweden with their first selection.
Like the previous draft, two impact players were taken before the Sabres 24th overall pick in 2006--C, Claude Giroux (22nd, PHI) and G, Semyon Varlamov (23rd, WSH.) Whether Buffalo would have taken either had they been afforded the opportunity is something we may never know, but against the backdrop of the league, the prospect pipeline and their new prototype for defensemen, the Buffalo Sabres selected defenseman Dennis Persson with their first round pick that year.
Persson was a 6'1" 192 lb., smooth-skating defenseman with offensive acumen who was said to have a bit of an edge to his game. Prior to his North American debut with the Portland Pirates in the 2008-09 season he had a goal and five assists in 46 games for Timra of the Swedish Elite League. He would play 171 games in the Sabres system scoring 33 points (8+25) with Portland and Rochester but inconsistencies kept him from ever playing a game in the NHL.
Although he was an emergency recall during the 2011 playoff series vs. Philadelphia, Persson never suited up. He was not re-signed that off season.
The 2005-06 season also heralded in a change in goal for the Sabres as 1999 fifth-round pick Ryan Miller won a three-way battle in net. Miller would outduel Dominic Hasek-successor, Martin Biron and Regier's first-ever pick as GM of Buffalo, Mika Noronen, who was traded mid-season.
With that in mind, the Sabres added to the goalie pipeline by selecting Swedish netminder, Jhonas "The Ewok" Enroth with the 46th overall pick.
Despite his diminutive size (5'11" 165 lbs.) for a goalie, Enroth has carved himself out a pretty nice NHL career. As a back-up to Miller, Enroth would push the starter to the point where a rookie-year hot-streak had fans calling Enroth "The Truth."
Truth be told, despite the feistiness he displayed and his sound technique, his physical limitations were exposed as the book on him became more in-depth.
Enroth ended up playing six seasons in Buffalo. After Miller was traded in 2014 he became the team's No. 1 goalie and over the next calendar year he started 65 games before being traded to the Dallas Stars. He moved on from Dallas at seasons end and signed a one-year free agent contract to be back-up in Los Angeles to Kings starter, Jonathan Quick. Not a bad situation and very fitting for a stand-up guy like Enroth.
Pittsburgh, PA native Mike Weber, whom the Sabres selected with their other second round pick (57th,) is not a smooth-skating defenseman. Nor is he a puck-mover. Or a playmaker. Or a scorer. He's a crease-clearing, defensive-defenseman with snarl to his game and he was drafted to add balance to the d-corps.
Weber, like Enroth, has been a consummate pro during his career in Buffalo as he's simply gone about his business playing whatever role the team needed. He's the type of player that knows his limitations and accepts the fact that the Hall of Fame is a place he'll visit and not be enshrined in. Weber will be entering his sixth full season in Buffalo, carving out a good career as a bottom-pairing/depth defenseman in Buffalo while gaining the respect of the multitude of coaches and front office personnel that have come through Buffalo the past few years.
Felix "I know nuthink" Schutz was drafted in the fourth round by the Sabres (117th) and at 5'11" 187 lbs. he was a bit undersized for the NHL. Buffalo plucked him as a two-way center who could score and set up. He spent two years in Portland (2008-2010) registering 69 points (28+41) in 145 games for the Pirates but he never suited up for the Sabres. He returned to his native Germany following the 2009-10 season and never returned to North America.
Montreal, Quebec native and Harvard University graduate Alex Biega was taken in the fifth round by the Sabres (147th.)
Biega spent four years at Harvard, which included captaincy his senior season, before joining the Portland Pirates for the 2011-12 season. The 5'11" 200 lb. defensemen would spend three full seasons in the Sabres system before signing a one-year, free agent contract with the Vancouver Canucks. He got his first taste of NHL action last year with the 'Nucks playing in seven games. He scored his first NHL goal in his first NHL game on February 16, 2015 and was named the game's first star.
Center Benjamin Breault was the Sabres last pick in the 2006 draft (7th round, 207th overall) and never made it to the AHL-level. After completing his fifth and final season in junior as an overager, Breault played seven games in the ECHL for the Florida Everblades then attended Dalhouise University for four years in Halifax, Nova Scotia before heading to France to play in the Magnus League.
The 2006 draft class, all of whom would be right in their primes right now at age 27, was the last for Jim Benning, the Sabres Director of Amateur Scouting. After eight years in that position, Benning moved on to Boston that summer as director of player personnel before assuming the role of AGM for the Bruins a year later.
If you're tallying up the score, as of right now, of the 15 picks the Sabres had in the 2005 and 2006 drafts, only one player is still with the team--Weber. And all of the five picks who've stuck in the NHL are in bottom-area/depth roles.
And next year wouldn't be much different.
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