Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR) - Even though the Sabres will open the preseason on Monday in Pittsburgh against the Penguins, their morning skate was held back in Buffalo.
Head coach Lindy Ruff is in Nashville to attend the memorial service for former Sabres winger Brent Peterson, which means assistant coach Seth Appert will assuming coaching duties for Monday's contest.
Last season, many wanted Appert fired for, what they perceived as deficiencies in the Sabres' power play. What they don't understand is Appert coaches the power play, but as head coach, Ruff decides how it is run.
Now many have input on the power play, and did have input over the summer when they did a lot of research and exchanging of ideas.
In Ruff's first season back with the Sabres, Buffalo's power play was 24th in the NHL at 18.8%. Last season, they were 19th in the league at 19.5%. In his two seasons combined, they were 25th at 19.2%.
Appert says much has been done to help improve the power play.
"We did a real deep dive this summer with our analytics group, spent a lot of time between myself and [vice president of hockey strategy and research] Sam Ventura, and then Sam's group - [manager of hockey research and development] Dom Galamini - did a ton of work for us," Appert explained on Monday after the morning skate in Buffalo.
"It was tedious to break it down to where you get to the key factors in power play success, and if you analytically replicate that and then study the league, you come up with the factors that are producing the most successful results on different power plays around the league."
With captain Rasmus Dahlin quarterbacking the power play and a guy like Tage Thompson, who has averaged 42 goals per-year over his last five seasons, on the first power play unit, you would think it would be better. Thompson's 160 goals is sixth in the NHL in the last four seasons. That's only 10 fewer than Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid.
As soon as training camp started on Thursday, there was one aspect of the power play they went right to work on, according to Appert.
"We put our power play under pressure because we need to get better at solving pressure and attacking out of solving pressure, because analytically, that's something we can improve at. And I think we have the skill level to be able to do that," Appert explained.
So what was the process like over the summer for the coaching staff with special teams?
"We spent hours-and-hours-and-hours watching film individually, and we spent hours watching those clips collectively. And then you boil it down to what's the most important things they need, so they have clarity of how we're going to play as a group," Appert said.
Last year in the playoffs, the Sabres' power play in the seven games against the Montreal Canadiens was 36%. Overall, of the 16 teams in the playoffs, the Sabres were sixth at 20.4%.
Appert says the additions of Zach Benson and Josh Doan made them better with the extra man against the Habs.
"Being good around the net, and we saw that in the Montreal series as we added Doan and Benson to the first unit. We had a lot of success scoring goals around the net," he said. "The biggest strength of those two guys is playing under the hash marks, and both from an offensive perspective, but also a puck retrieval prospective."
As far as everyone being involved, Appert has coached for many years at many levels, but admits what this staff does is unique.
"I don't know if I've ever coached on a more collaborative group," he said. "That is a credit to Lindy, who he is, As long as he's been in this league, he's open-minded to new ideas, to analytics, to new ideas to practice certain ways. And also his steadfastness on his core principals, on what he believes in and what's winning hockey. So we are collective in everything we do, and it's not certainly my unit. If it's anybody's unit, it's 'Dahl's' [Dahlin] and 'Tommer's' [Thompson]. I believe it's the players' team, the players' PK and power play units, and I'm a big believer in impowering our players, because those are the guys that we believe in and that we trust to have out there in those situations."
Appert wouldn't say how, but the Sabres will be using Thompson differently this year. He also says these are analytic facts that the players are getting on what drives the most successful power plays.
As far as the lineup for Monday's game, very few of the players will be regulars with the team this season:
Forwards:
Richard - Kulich - Sheary
McDonough - Fiddler-Schultz - Valente
Kuntar - Kozak - Poulin
Bordeleau - Peca - Danforth
Defense:
Gilbert - Metsa
Rathbone - Komarov
Johnson - Mrtka
Goalies:
Lyon - Ellis
Faceoff is set for 7 p.m., with pregame coverage starting at 6 p.m. with Zach Jones and Derek Kramer. Be sure to catch every Sabres game this season on the radio home of the team - WGR.
