For the entirety of Jack Eichel’s tenure as a Sabre, the team could never assemble a competent group of depth forwards to complement their superstar. The names of some of the pieces they tried are well-known to Sabres fans: Benoit Pouliot, Vladimir Sobotka, CJ Smith, Jimmy Vesey, and plenty more whose names could probably fill an entire blog. Now, like the plot to an O. Henry short story, they have the opposite problem whereby they have plenty of decent depth options and no game-changing talent up front.
They’ll need to be in the draft market for that bona fide first-line center unless Dylan Cozens, Peyton Krebs or Casey Mittelstadt can grab the reigns on that job. There’s time to let that all play out and allow the cream to rise to the top. What needs to be addressed for next year is sorting out who will remain in the bottom-6 for the Sabres. With a plethora of decent depth options, the Sabres have some interesting choices to make when it comes to next year’s roster build.
The forward positions on this team look especially full for next year. Jeff Skinner will be back next year due to his immovable contract, and Sabres prospect JJ Peterka will – in all likelihood – make a major push for a full-time roster spot. Add to that Peyton Krebs, Dylan Cozens, Tage Thompson, Casey Mittelstadt, Kyle Okposo, Zemgus Girgensons, Brett Murray, Victor Olofsson, Alex Tuch, Jack Quinn and whatever they decide to in free agency, and the roster populates itself very quickly.
The one thing the Sabres don’t have for next year is a checking-line center. Cody Eakin will not be back, and it’s unlikely that they bring back either of Drake Caggiula or Mark Jankowski, either. Arttu Ruotsalainen could be a contender for a 4th line spot, but he’s really not a defensive specialist. He’s not a specialist of any kind, in fact.
The two most qualified candidates as it stands now look like Asplund and Girgensons, who essentially offer the same things at wing when looking at both their counting stats and the analytics numbers.
Rasmus Asplund: 5 goals, 10 assists
Zemgus Girgensons: 6 goals, 5 assists
Girgensons has primarily played in a checking role with Eakin, Caggiula and Okposo when he’s been healthy and available, while Asplund started the season with Tage Thompson and Victor Olofsson and has recently jumped around with all the injuries and Covid stuff happening.
The ideal checking line composed of internal pieces would consist of Zemgus Girgensons on the left side, Kyle Okposo on the right, and Rasmus Asplund up the middle, if Asplund is capable of manning that position. All three players are stellar defensively. The Sabres have backed off the idea of Asplund being a center over the past year or so, even though the Swedish-born forward was drafted as a center in the 2nd round of the 2016 NHL draft. Management clearly likes the energy he brings to the wing, and at 5’11” perhaps they think that he’s too small to be a pivot at the NHL level.
There is also the problem of his faceoff acumen*(see footnote for more on faceoff theory). Asplund has an underwhelming 39% win rate at the dot this year. That number is a bit deceiving though, as he has only taken 41 faceoffs which isn’t a large enough statistical sample size to make sweeping conclusions. Even if Asplund is unable to improve those numbers with practice (and there’s no reason to believe he couldn’t), Kyle Okposo is more than capable of filling in that role, as he has a 52% win-rate on draws this season on over 100 attempts. Back in 2012-2013, Okposo took nearly 200 draws and won 54% of them.
The immediate impact of moving Asplund back to center is that it would allow the Sabres to wean themselves off Cody Eakin. Eakin is a blackhole offensively and he isn’t as good as Asplund defensively, either. Cody Eakin wins faceoffs though, so Cody Eakin gets to play. There’s no good reason for him to keep playing 17 minutes a night, though, especially when Dylan Cozens returns to the lineup.
The long-term impact of moving Asplund to center is that it allows pieces to fit together better and it maximizes the defensive impact of a line by having all three players contributing to that success rather than two players dragging a third along. If the center experiment doesn’t work, that at least gives the Sabres time to think about how they will address a depth center position next year. More information in a lost year is a good thing. Sam Reinhart and Tage Thompson both made successful transitions to center. It’s time to find out if Asplund can too.
*(It appears from a bit of research that there is a correlation between number of faceoffs taken and win percentage. In years where Okposo has taken fewer faceoffs, his winning percentage is substantially lower. This is true of Jeff Skinner, too. Phil Housley had Skinner take nearly 300 faceoffs in 2018-19 and he won 52% of them that year. In the three years since, he hasn’t been asked to do it much and his win rate has dropped precipitously. It also applies to Sam Reinhart who had his best win percentage last year – 45 percent – while taking nearly 300 draws.
Whether this is due to being more focused on the task when asked to do it regularly, or whether more faceoffs simply leads to win-rate evening out due to random chance is an open question. There is also the enduring question as to whether faceoffs matter. We can leave that for another day, but, it certainly appears that taking more draws leads to a better win percentage.)
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