The Buffalo Sabres are gearing up for the start of the 2020-21 season, which begins for the team on Thursday, Jan. 14 against the Washington Capitals at KeyBank Center.
Before stepping on to the ice for the first game action of the year, the team will open up training camp on Thursday as players begin to report to the team's facility for testing and physicals. The first on-ice practice for the Sabres will begin on Friday.
It has been a long while since the Sabres were last on the ice for any team-related activity. Their last game came on March 9 against the Capitals in Buffalo, while their last team practice was March 11 before the NHL shut down its season the next day.
Since then, the team and the players were then forced to wait out the COVID-19 pandemic as they watched 24 other teams around the league compete in the Return To Play plan over the summer in the Toronto and Edmonton bubbles.
Sabres head coach Ralph Krueger is eager to get back on the ice for the upcoming season. He's been in Buffalo for some time with his coaching staff working on preparations for the 2020-21 campaign, but wants to see his players in action ahead of the Jan. 14 start for his group.
Krueger took some time on Wednesday to step away from those preparations and join Howard Simon and Jeremy White on WGR.
Here is some of what he had to say:
Krueger on what the team has been doing to prepare for the 2020-21 season:
"We've had regular coaches meetings, we've been in touch with the players over the platform of Zoom, and we had meetings for the month of October. We came together as coaches here in Buffalo, and went over the past and planned the future. We've been here for a few weeks now, in the trenches getting ready for what's coming up. ... It's been an interesting year for all of us, and we're looking [forward to] this next chapter in the Sabres' story. We're ready to attack it."
Krueger on how the team has handled the extended time away from the ice:
"We're three-and-a-half months away from where we should've started training camp, so it's not an endless amount of time. First reports are that everybody's put on a little bit of muscle, a little bit of power, and now it's up to us as coaches to put into use. Of course we'll have to work on getting our timing back, getting our feet back. We have 13 days of ice training where we can do that, so we're confident by the 14th against Washington we'll be ready to go."
Krueger on how the team can carry over what was successful from last season into this season:
"We can't be happy with our final results, but we felt the game and a culture within the club developing in the right direction. We have a lot of confirmations that we want to add in. The players that are returning will feel this really quickly, and the new ones will be spread out through the lineup. ... Communication is going to be a lot different for us. We won't be able to small talk with the guys or hang our with them as much as we have. We're not even allowed to be face-to-face with the players until [Thursday]. There's so many new situations, and we need to find pathways of communication that we can get everybody up to speed and have the same amount of information."
Krueger on utilizing the six-man taxi squad for the upcoming season:
"That's going to create an honest competition within the group. You cannot take too many nights off, or you can't take a night off because there's going to be not only the scratched players from our roster of 22 or 23 players, but there's going to be six guys waiting, pushing and training to get a chance, get an opportunity. That internal competition will keep guys honest, and I think will help in the level of play that we're going to get on a daily basis."
Krueger on what the team needs to do better with this season:
"First, we need to confirm our defensive 5-on-5 game, which was top-10 in the National Hockey League last year. That was our foundation that we are taking with [us], and our aggressive defensive stance and the work the guys did without the puck to take away time and space will be that much more important in a season where everybody begins a little bit rough.
"If you look at the penalty kill and power play combination, we need to get those combined over 100%, which means, as an example, a P.K. at 80% and a power play at 21% brings you over. Those are the kind of areas that we believe we improved with specific personnel, especially on the penalty kill with Cody Eakin and Tobias Rieder coming into the group.
"Our 5-on-5 offensive game with the possession we had in the offensive zone needs to get more linear to the net. We need to create more second opportunities in that area. It's not a huge jump that needs to be taken here. It's percentage points. Everybody knows that the NHL is the most competitive league in professional sports, and it's percentage points that pushes teams up and down the standings.
"Our division will be challenging, but we believe if we concentrate on those areas where we saw the most opportunity for growth, we can take that step quite quickly."
You can listen to the entire interview below:
Be sure to hear all of the action this upcoming season on the Radio Home of the Buffalo Sabres - WGR Sports Radio 550!
