Colin Miller has become the forgotten man on the right side of the Sabres blueline.
Fire up the way-back machine to 2019 and consider the moves the Sabres made from the trade deadline all the way through the summer to bolster the right side of their defense: The Sabres under Jason Botterill added Brandon Montour at the trade deadline, then they traded for Colin Miller after the draft, and supplemented the d-corps further with the trade for Henri Jokiharju in exchange for Alex Nylander. These three right-side defensemen were added to a blueline that already included righties Rasmus Ristolainen and Zach Bogosian.
For those counting at home, that’s five right-side defensemen, with Rasmus Dahlin, Jake McCabe, Marco Scandella and Lawrence Pilut ready to go on the left for a grand total of 9(!) NHL defensemen going into the season with no real plan on how to handle that. Rather than trade anyone, the Sabres opted to keep everyone to start the season because playing Brandon Montour at left wing on the fourth line was just too good of an idea to pass up instead of trading Ristolainen for a center who would have allowed Marcus Johansson to play on the wing where he should have been.
Anyway, let’s move on.
After I rant a little bit more. The paradox of the Jason Botterill experience is that he did a fantastic job acquiring and retaining nine NHL defensemen who were all worthy of regular minutes, and then refused to part with any of them to upgrade his forwards. The Sabres had Marcus Johansson centering Jeff Skinner with Vladimir Sobotka on the right side, and then on the fourth line they had Casey Mittelstadt centering Conor Sheary and Jimmy Vesey (who had been acquired by the Sabres for the second time for a 3rd round draft pick). If they had simply moved Rasmus Ristolainen and Marco Scandella for a pair of capable forwards then it’s incredibly likely that they would have earned the one – ONE – point necessary to put themselves in the 24-team playoff picture following the COVID-19 shutdown. That also would have allowed Brandon Montour to play defense which is the position that Brandon Montour plays, in case people were confused about that.
Now I’m done.
I feel much better.
Fast forward to 2021 and the two right-side defensemen left standing are Jokiharju and Miller, while most of the others were jettisoned during various parts of the ongoing purge of the Sabres roster. Miller is a highly capable defenseman who can play on the second pair of almost any team in the NHL which is presumably why Botterill spent a 2nd round pick in 2021 and a 5th round pick in 2022 to acquire him. Pretty wild that the Sabres still haven’t paid that 5th round pick yet. Below is the chart of Colin Miller from the 2017-18 season with Golden Knights which he crushed:
When the Sabres traded for Miller, initially he was thought to be an offensive defenseman because he had put up 10 goals and 31 assists for Vegas in 2017-2018, and certainly he is that guy. The interesting thing about Miller, though, is that his defensive metrics suggest that he’s more than that, and his offensive metrics don’t look all that stellar during his time in Buffalo.
His offense fell off a cliff under Ralph Krueger (like everyone else) but his defensive impacts have remained strong on a team that has largely not been good defensively. The Sabres will need that now more than ever with the departure of Jake McCabe who was probably the best Sabre at pure defensive ability. With Don Granato now at the helm, it’s entirely possible that his offense rebounds under a system that will encourage offense. The Sabres could desperately use a double-digit goal-scorer from the blueline.
Anyone who has watched Miller knows that he has a booming clapper from the point so perhaps that feeds into the narrative that he’s more of an offensive guy than a defensive one, although he’s shown himself to be perfectly capably in his own zone as well and he’ll likely be relied on in that role with the young duo of Rasmus Dahlin and Henri Jokiharju playing offensive-zone minutes. The 6’1”, 200 pound defenseman has also been known to chuck knuckles occasionally which will come in handy on a young and largely soft Sabres roster.
This brings us back to the origin point of the article: Colin Miller has been largely forgotten because of all the faces coming and going over the past few years, but he’s still a solid defenseman. This group of defensemen looks credible despite all the departures of familiar faces which makes it a real shame that the goaltending group looks so weak this year and the forwards are such a question mark. The defense group this year looks completely reasonable on paper and is almost certainly the best position group of the squad. The problem is that Sabres organization – for the past decade – has simply not been able to assemble the correct pieces elsewhere on the roster at the proper time and that looks to have continued this season.
Here’s the depth chart as currently constructed. Huge shoutout to Stashu for helping me to figure out out to make the hypertext work. I am living proof that not all millennials are good at technology and I very much appreciate his help. Readers can click each player and read my preview of their profile.
X – X – X
X – X – X
Arttu Ruotsalainen -
Rasmus Asplund -
Vinnie Hinostroza
Zemgus Girgensons -
John Hayden -
Kyle Okposo
Cody Eakin
X – X
X – Colin Miller
Mattias Samuelsson -
Mark Pysyk
X
Dustin Tokarski
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Jack Eichel tweeted out an “unamused” emoji
The hockey world will continue to decipher the meaning behind the disgruntled captain’s emoji while the Sabres continue to wait for a reasonable offer.
The end.
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