Usually these articles start with a little background before getting into the nitty gritty, but today we’re going to Quentin Tarantino this thing and start with the end by showing three player cards that illustrate Rasmus Dahlin’s underlying statistics in a year-by-year fashion. For those who haven’t seen these charts before, the idea is that they show the offensive and defensive impact based on goals above replacement and expected goals against replacement.
This is a story of three pictures, three coaches and one first overall pick:
That player card is Rasmus Dahlin during his rookie season under the tutelage of former Sabres coach – and former offensive defenseman – Phil Housley.
That is the player card under coach Ralph Krueger during Dahlin’s sophomore season.
And that is the player card under Ralph Krueger and Don Granato this past year.
Look how they massacred my boy
That is called regression. The good news is that the offensive spark in terms of chance generation started to come back following the coaching switch from Krueger to Don Granato.
Rasmus Dahlin was drafted 1st overall back in 2018 in a season where the Sabres finished – and this may shock you to hear – last in the NHL. The 2017-2018 season was coach Phil Housley’s first and featured the notable departure of Evander Kane at the trade deadline along with the departures of Robin Lehner and Ryan O’Reilly following the conclusion of the season. The consolation prize for finishing last and winning the draft lottery was that the Sabres would be able to draft consensus number one pick Rasmus Dahlin when the draft opened in late June.
Dahlin would be the third player to be selected first overall by the Sabres along with franchise icon Gilbert Perreault in 1970 and Pierre Turgeon in 1987. (Random side note here: it’s pretty wild to realize that Pierre Turgeon was still playing in the NHL during the 2006-2007 season).
Dahlin was widely believed to be the best defensive prospect in a generation, with some going as far as to call him the “Connor McDavid of defensemen,” a moniker that has placed enormous expectations on the young defenseman that he hasn’t yet come close to matching. The Trollhättan, Sweden native came out swinging in his rookie season as he posted 44 points in 82 games as an 18-year-old which, when combined with his 40 points in the 2019-2020 season, equated to the third-most points by a teenager in NHL history behind only Phil Housley and Ray Bourque.
Things went completely off the rails in his third season as he started the year with a -9 rating in the first 10 games with only 3 points to show for it offensively. The Sabres were playing a system designed to limit chances against under Ralph Krueger that rendered most of Dahlin’s strengths irrelevant as he was asked to be a defensive stalwart rather than an offensive dynamo. Dahlin appeared confused, hesitant and was prone to multiple brain-lapses per game that led to scoring chances and goals against while his offensive highlights were few and far between. The 6’3” defenseman had completely lost his game toward the end of Ralph Krueger’s tenure and looked to have particularly nasty case of the yips that resulted in some ugly highlights against. Maybe there’s some kind of petroleum-based benzene derivative in the banks of the Buffalo River left over from the city’s steel manufacturing heyday that makes Sabres players lose their love for the game and perform poorly.
Or maybe it’s just bad coaching.
In any case, Dahlin seemed to calm down, make better decisions and create some more offensive opportunities once Don Granato took over as coach of the Sabres, as he relayed to the Buffalo News’s Lance Lysowski in April:
Dahlin has the “green light” from interim coach Don Granato to take such risks, whereas Krueger typically had his defensemen stationary at the blue line in the offensive zone.
“It makes me confident,” Dahlin said following an optional practice Tuesday in KeyBank Center. “It makes me enjoy the game a lot. I can't complain.”
Dahlin rarely showed joy under Krueger this season. Dahlin wasn’t carrying the puck with confidence. His lack of engagement offensively carried over into his own zone, where there were continued lapses in coverage around the Sabres’ net. He seemed to be second-guessing himself and his abilities.
“That play is exactly why we need him playing with confidence,” explained Granato. “When you're not confident, you second guess the bounce of that puck, you hesitate and then it's the breakaway the other way. When you're in the zone, you react on instincts and his instincts are incredible. … That is a key play, key moment that could swing either way.”
That quote from Granato at the end of the excerpt perfectly encapsulates what had happened at the end of Krueger’s tenure that had rendered Dahlin ineffective and perhaps even detrimental to the team: He had lost confidence in the style of play that made him a first overall pick because he was asked to be something that he’s not, and that perhaps he never will be. The Sabres can’t and shouldn’t ask Dahlin to be a stay-at-home defenseman like Mike Weber, although he can dish out some pretty nasty hits like Weber that tend to go under the radar as he has an excellent ability to launch a throw-back-style hip check that launches players into the air.
This is not to say that Dahlin’s penchant for turnovers stopped following the coaching change or will stop in the future when he’s allowed to play his game. Dahlin’s game is predicated on taking chances and using his high-end skill to make passes and try moves that players with less skill probably wouldn’t even attempt, so there will always be moments when Dahlin gives the puck away on high-risk pass through the neutral zone. Granato seems to understand that living with that possibility is the only way the Sabres can get the best version of Dahlin that they possibly can. Granato spoke about that learning curve when he appeared on “The Howard and Jeremy Show” on WGR550 radio in Buffalo in late August.
“The biggest part of development – which was painful for him – is learning discretion," Granato said. “It’s: ‘Can I do this? Can I get away with this? Will I get in trouble for trying this?’ Until you’re allowed to do that, it’s hard for the player to gauge. If you’re on them for every mistake they make, then they become very conservative, and they’ll never come close to reaching their peak. So that was my approach with him last year, and it’ll be similar this year.”
And that’s the balance that the Sabres will need to live with if they’re going to get the best out of the 21-year-old. They absolutely need him to try new things and be creative on the outlet passes from the defensive zone and also allow him to make blind, no-look backhand passes across the goalmouth in the offensive zone. Dahlin’s game isn’t predicated on speed as his footspeed could best be called average at the NHL level, but rather in his smooth-skating style and his offensive vision that allows him to see plays developing as they’re happening.
It’s also important to remember just how young Dahlin is and how much better he can get as his approaches his physical prime in his mid-20s. Dahlin will now be tasked with playing big minutes in all facets of the game and he’ll learn what he can and cannot do in the NHL while growing with a young Sabres core.
It’s going to be a little while before fans see the best version of Rasmus Dahlin but the best is yet to come.
Here’s the roster to this point:
Jeff Skinner – X –
Victor Olofsson
Anders Bjork – X –
Tage Thompson
Arttu Ruotsalainen -
Rasmus Asplund -
Vinnie Hinostroza
Zemgus Girgensons -
John Hayden -
Kyle Okposo
Cody Eakin
Rasmus Dahlin –
Henri Jokiharju
Will Butcher –
Mark Pysyk
Mattias Samuelsson -
Colin Miller
Craig Anderson
Dustin Tokarski 
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