Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR) - The Buffalo Sabres played much better in Monday's game at the Sabres Prospects Showcase at Harborcenter than they did Sunday, but still lost in overtime to the Boston Bruins, 4-3.
The team skated much better, they got in shooting and passing lanes much better for starting goalie Sam Meloche (fourth-round 2025) and even got out to a 2-0 lead after losing on Sunday 6-2.
The Sabres could've been out to even a larger lead but they passed up numerous shots losing great opportunities.
The Bruins scored 10 goals in the two games and 2025 first-round pick James Hagens had six of them including all four goals on Monday.
Trailing 2-0 ,Hagens used his superior wrist shot to score power play goals right under the crossbar at 18:12 and 19:55 of the second period. He netted his hat trick goal at 2:41 of the third period putting the puck in the same exact place on Meloche to make it 3-2. Liam Valente looked good in both games. He's a smallish winger who played two years at Western Michigan University and two years at Providence College before signing an AHL contract with the Amerks. After the Mustangs lost in the NCAA Tournament Regionals to the University of Denver, he played two regular season games with Rochester and two playoff games picking up one goal. He tied the game on Monday with a really nice wrister of his own forcing overtime where Hagens won it.
I had my eye on Sabres 2025 first-round pick Radim Mrtka. Hagens went seventh overall while Mrtka went ninth, but Hagens was far superior to Mrtka in these two games. Hagens played two games with the Bruins in the regular season and three games against the Sabres in the playoffs picking up one assist in the five games. Mrtka played eight regular season games with the Amerks and three playoff games picking up two assists. In between the 19-year-old went back to the Western Hockey League to play 43 games with the Seattle Thunderbirds.
In both games Mrtka skated extremely well. It looked like he wanted to leave his mark joining the play often, but on Sunday, he did a very poor job of reading plays and kept turning the puck over by forcing plays that weren't there. Amerks head coach Mike Leone didn't like what he saw on Sunday, especially from 2022 fifth-round pick Vsevolod Komarov and Mrtka,
"The guys that have played in the AHL on the back end I think had a tough night for sure. I thought we worked really hard, I just thought our execution and our puck play, our puck decisions weren't great."
On Sunday both those defensemen were getting up ice, but not getting results. Leone said,
"I think sometimes you try to push too much to get up into the play and play offense, when you just could make the play that's in front of you, and I think they over complicated the game at times."
On Monday, Mrtka was again skating well, and I could tell he was trying not to force plays quite as much. He's not at all afraid to go to battle along the wall and he's pretty good at winning some battles. He will engage players to get them away from his net and I think in time, he can add some offense to his game. In two seasons with the Thunderbirds he only had four goals and 65 assists for 69 points in 86 games.
Mrtka is a tall, lanky player that of course is going to get bigger because of the work he'll put in with the director of performance, Brian Galivan. Leone said Mrtka worked hard over the summer to get bigger and stronger,
"Yes, I think that was a huge emphasis in the off-season to spend a lot of time. He looks really good. As far as his physicality I think he got stronger. He went to Prague in the summer and was training with a really good group there (that included Jiri Kulich) and this summer he had a full summer to train."
Mrtka didn't want to give himself too much credit for doing the right things during the summer. He said,
"I always working as hard as I can, so just keep it the same way and my conditioning coach (in Prague), he's the one doing the work, so I'm just doing his work and I feel like it's nothing that special because most of the guys are probably doing the same thing as me."
Mrtka did admit to me that he feels stronger.
Mrtka had to bounce around last year, first to Rochester, then to Seattle and back to Rochester. He said,
"It was amazing for me, I got to play in the AHL which is one step away from the NHL, so that was a good lesson for me and then I went back to Seattle where I played a lot of minutes, so that was great for me as well."
Mrtka said he did feel more comfortable at the prospects event this season than he did last year.
Clarence Center defenseman and last year's captain at Boston University, Gavin McCarthy had a good two games. He had a goal and two assists. He'll begin his pro career playing in Rochester. The 21-year-old was taken in the third-round of the 2023 draft. Defenseman Maxim Strbak was selected by the Sabres in the second round of the same draft. He too will start in Rochester. He's also 21 and spent three years at Michigan State University.
