An In-Depth Robin Lehner Trade Analysis

Source: Jay Kopinski/Icon SMI

Also submitted as a fanpost on Die By The Blade.

When the news first broke that the Buffalo Sabres had traded the 21st overall pick in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft in exchange for Robin Lehner and David Legwand from the Ottawa Senators, a good portion of Sabres nation freaked out. Not only were the Sabres trading away a 1st round pick in a draft that many have been labeling as the deepest since 2003, they were also acquiring a starting goaltender that many fans didn't even consider to be the best option available on the trade market (myself included). But despite his struggles in Ottawa over the past two seasons, there's no denying that the soon-to-be 24-year old has excellent long-term potential.

Now that the dust has settled, the question I want to answer is whether Tim Murray made the best move by acquiring Robin Lehner. To evaluate this, I'm comparing Lehner to the other goalies that were traded and had been previously linked to the Sabres (Cam Talbot, Eddie Lack, Martin Jones and the negotiating rights for Antti Niemi) through the following lenses: projected performance, the cost of the draft pick(s) that each goaltender was exchanged for, and the value of each goaltender's contract.

Projected Performance

Let's start with the caveat that the easiest thing to predict about goaltenders' performance from season to season is that it's very unpredictable, though the more shots a goaltender has faced over the course of his career the better we are able to project his performance in the future. There's also the question of whether 5v5 / Even-Strength Save % is the best metric for evaluating goaltender performance, as well as the accuracy of shot location data for High, Medium and Low Danger Zone opportunities from War-on-Ice that will play a large part in this analysis. So given the limited tools available, how does Lehner stack up against the other recently traded goalies? 

A few days before the trade frenzy, the phenomenal InGoal Magazine ran a piece breaking down Talbot, Lack and Lehner by Danger Zone (or DZ). In summary, the article determined that Talbot was the most preferable of the three goalies, followed by Lack and then Lehner. By comparing all three goaltenders' Career Save %s by DZ and how that compared to the volume of shots and quality of goaltenders that Buffalo endured last season, the article estimated that Talbot would have saved the Sabres an estimated 36 goals last season (or an additional 6 wins, applying a thumb rule developed by Eric Tulsky a few years ago). As for Lack and Lehner, they would have respectively saved just 12 and 2 more goals than the Buffalo Sabres' 2014-15 goaltending battery of Michal Neuvirth, Jhonas Enroth, Anders Lindback, Matt Hackett and Andrey Makarov managed to stop. 

But when it comes to evaluating goaltenders' desirability based on past performance alone, Lehner should get a lot more benefit of the doubt than the article gives him for a few different reasons. First off, part of Lehner's performance likely can be explained by Paul MacLean's system simply not being the best fit for him, a possibility raised by both InGoal Editor / goaltending guru Kevin Woodley and Lehner himself. As Woodley notes in a seperate piece:

"[Lehner] has not progressed technically during his time with the Senators. That’s not shocking given the way Ottawa’s goalies play, with an emphasis on more aggressive positioning than in many other places and more flow and movement as a result."

Age also benefits Lehner favorably relative to the other recently traded goalies, as the soon-to-be 24-year old is just now entering the part of his career where most goaltenders peak. Conversely, Talbot and Lack are already both 27, still close to their primes but at the start of the gradual drop-off. Another theory that could also work in Lehner's favor is the idea that he will thrive now that he's out of Craig Anderson's shadow and will be the undisputed starter in Buffalo, ahead of Chad Johnson. This would be similar to how Sergei Bobrovsky showed flashes of potential in Philadelphia but didn't blossom until he was traded to Columbus and handed the starting job.

While Lehner's Career 5v5 Save % is disconcerting when compared to the other goaltending candidates (91.77%, or .4% below the league average from 2007-15 per data from War-on-Ice), a deeper look into Lehner's performance by DZ tells a different story:

When predicting future goaltending success, High DZ saves have been found to be the most correlated with overall success, while Medium DZ saves have some correlation and Low DZ saves have virtually none at all. Given the relatively large variance of High DZ Save % for 49 goalies that faced at least 3,000 shots from 2007-15, it's most likely that differentiable skill is surfacing in High DZ Save %, which is the one DZ area that Lehner comes out ahead of the league average (albeit in a pretty limited sample size). Conversely, Lehner's Low DZ Save % falls significantly below the 2007-15 average of 97.4%; since all but two goalies from 2007-15 had Career Low DZ Save %s within 97-98%, Lehner is a prime candidate to see his Low DZ Save % rise towards the league average over the next few seasons. To a lesser extent, we should also expect Lehner's significantly low Medium DZ Save % to rise towards the league average. Lehner also has a great opportunity to improve on his High DZ Save % due to his young age and the volume of work and development he will get this season.

While Lehner's career save percentages by DZ helps validate the idea that he was relatively unlucky during his time in Ottawa, some fans may still feel strongly that Martin Jones or Cam Talbot would have been better options. However, both goaltenders benefited from some luck in even smaller sample sizes than Lehner, with both Jones and Talbot accruing unsustainably High DZ Save %s on defensively stout teams during the peak years of their careers. Given that Cory Schneider has the best Career High DZ Save % of 86.09% from War-on-Ice's dataset and the only other goalies above 85% are Jonas Hiller, Tuukka Rask, Braden Holtby and Henrik Lundqvist, Jones (86.2%) and Talbot (88.3%) will almost certainly see their High DZ %s regress in San Jose and Edmonton, respectively. The question that is difficult to answer is how much regression we should expect each to experience over the next few seasons, and how their long-term performance will compare to Lehner.

To help evaluate this, I utilized a hockey version of baseball's Marcels forecasting system as developed by Garik16, which in turn is based off of Brian MacDonald's Bayesian approach to projecting goaltender performance. While the Marcels model is still very new and has its limitations (e.g., a below average goaltender is positively impacted by regression to the mean; it does not utilize Adjusted Save %s in its forecast), its use of regression and aging makes it the best available tool for projecting future performance. After refreshing and replicating Garik16's projections from February of 2015 for 5v5 Career Save %, I came up with the below ballpark values that we should see expect each goaltender to perform at over the next few seasons and compared it to their past performance:

I have a much more thorough examination of the Marcels methodology in a separate post. But it should be noted that the previous season's performance plays a considerable effect on how well a goaltender is expected to play in the future, so a significantly lucky or unlucky season the year before is going to have a large effect on the projection. Using the same weighting methodology following the 2012-13 season, Lehner would have been projected to be a long-term .924 5v5 goalie - i.e., where Talbot is now - but a variety of factors contributed to him being a .912 5v5 goalie the past two seasons.  Whether those factors were plain old bad luck or Lehner's initial success in the NHL (.938 5v5 goalie from 2011-13) being significantly higher than his actual ability will be played out in Buffalo this season.

One additional consideration that should be noted is that all the goaltenders in this analysis have switched teams, which could have an effect on projections. However, the odds that a new team will significantly impact any of the goaltenders' future performance are pretty low. Generally speaking, shot quality distribution for starting goaltenders has generally been found to only affect save percentage by 0.5% or less, while save percentages by shot attempt quantity has too much noise to claim that a higher workload has a positive or negative impact. So while I am particularly worried for Cam Talbot in Edmonton given the recent history there, individual talent and luck should be the two main factors driving future goaltender performance.

Speaking of luck, the role that it plays in goaltender save percentages and performance gives a lot of weight to the argument that the Sabres simply should've went for the goalie that was the best value. Knowing what we know about past performance and future projections, was the price that Buffalo paid to acquire Lehner worth giving up the 21st overall pick in the 2015 NHL Entry Level Draft?

Draft Pick Value

My initial reaction to the Robin Lehner trade was that Eddie Lack or Martin Jones would have been better trade options for the Sabres due to the relatively lower asking prices that Los Angeles and Vancouver would demand from Buffalo, as the Sabres were the only Eastern Conference team seeking a starter for the 2015-16 season. However, I was glad that Buffalo traded just the #21 pick to the Senators as opposed to #31 and #51, which Bryan Murray would have likely preferred based on his earlier comments. Additionally, I was glad that the #21 pick was used to acquire Lehner as opposed to an 18-year old goalie, which is an even riskier proposition in my opinion. So was I on point with my initial reaction that many Sabres fans likely shared?

For this analysis, I'll evaluate what the Sabres, Oilers, Sharks, Hurricanes and Stars respectively paid the Senators, Rangers, Canucks, Bruins and Sharks into a couple different draft pick valuation systems to help determine trade value. It should be noted that I'm only evaluating the Bruins' trade of Jones to San Jose, as the initial trade of Jones to the Bruins was part of a package the Kings used to acquire Milan Lucic. I also omitted David Legwand's inclusion in the Lehner trade from this analysis, as the team's current cap situation makes it easy for Buffalo to either keep or waive him at any point this season.

The first valuation system I utilized was developed by Scott Cullen of TSN and assigns each player selected from the 1990 to 2010 drafts a value of 1-10 as an indicator of his success, with 1 being a player that has played 10 NHL games or less and 10 being a 'Generational' player. Each draft slot is then given an average expected score based on past success of the players drafted in those spots alone. It should be noted that this system has a bunch of disclaimers that I dedicated a separate post to when it came to evaluating these trades (including my work around for valuing the Sharks' future first round pick, but more on that in a bit). However, what makes Cullen's methodology advantageous is it creates a ballpark value for each pick in the draft that can then be translated into in plain English, such that #1 overall pick is expected to be a 1st liner while the 21st is expected to fall somewhere between a Fringe (200-349 NHL games) and Regular (350+) NHLer.

The second valuation system I used was developed by Eric Tulsky, who looked at 46 draft pick trades from the 2006 to 2012 drafts to estimate the prices GMs had to pay to move up and down in the draft  them and placed it on a scale of 0-100 (similar to the NFL Draft's Value Board). As shown in the above graph, I mapped Tulsky's graph into an exponential equation that gives us an R^2 of over 96%, a near perfect fit outside of the Top 10. What separates these two systems is the end goal - Tulsky's is about the expected cost for moving up and down in the draft, while Cullen's is about the expected value of the player that you draft in those positions. 

While trading a first rounder for Lehner may have sounded bad initially, both systems have it as being superior to trading two second round picks. The only way trading #21 instead of #31 and #51 can be considered a loss for the Sabres is if the Avalanche would have demanded a lesser prospect than JT Compher  in the Ryan O'Reilly trade if #21 was still play (side note: I highly doubt Colorado makes the trade with Buffalo unless Nikita Zadorov is included, given their need for left handed defensemen). Additionally, Robin Lehner is well on his way to being a Regular NHLer, meaning Buffalo gave Ottawa fair value to get the goalie they considered to be the best on the market (from an in-division rival, no less).

Depending on the valuation system employed, different conclusions come out over who paid the higher price between Buffalo and Edmonton. While Tulsky's draft value board would indicate that the Oilers spent half the amount of draft capital than Buffalo did, the Oilers gave up about the same amount of expected NHL talent as the Sabres did according to Cullen's system. This is not an unreasonable conclusion: the odds that any one of the Rangers' three draft picks becomes a Regular NHLer are probably about as good that the player that ultimately went #21 to Ottawa, Colin White, does. Though more research should be done into this, a market inefficiency could exist in teams overvaluing position in the latter (4th through 7th) rounds, meaning that teams should be trying to move down as often as possible to gain additional picks once they are in the back nine of the draft.

What is also important to remember is when these trades occurred. While many hockey pundits thought Cam Talbot would be the first domino to fall, Buffalo made the first move before another team that lost out on Talbot would ante up to acquire Lehner. While Murray's aggressiveness means he didn't get the best value on the trade market (that distinction goes to Ron Francis), the Sabres avoided the fate of the Sharks. Having missed out on the other trade options and seeing their previous starter Antti Niemi' sign with Dallas after his negotiating rights were traded there, the Sharks were forced to pony up a 2016 1st round pick and a prospect for Jones. A future 1st first pick is a significantly higher risk than moving #21 given that teams that miss playoffs (which is definitely a possibility for the Sharks) will have three chances to move into the top of the draft starting next summer. 

In any scenario, the price that Hurricanes spent on Eddie Lack was the best value of the goalie trades, as Jim Benning had to settle for a 3rd round pick after shopping Lack for a 2nd rounder. Additionally, the price that Ron Francis paid for Eddie Lack is the same price that Tim Murray could have gotten Lack for, given Vancouver's preference to move him east (versus Calgary or Edmonton). What is not in Lack's favor is the fact that he has the worst Career High Danger Zone (DZ) Save % of the traded goalies, and is a strong candidate to see his Medium Save % regress back towards the mean. But Lack has also seeked out Lyle Mast to train with this summer, the founder of the Head Trajectory puck trucking philosophy for goaltenders that has been identified as one of the contributing factors to Devan Dubnyk's bounce back season. Should this training help Lack realize just some of the gains that Dubnyk made in High DZ Save % from 2013-14 (81.3%) to 2014-15 (85.8%), then the Lack trade could rank alongisde Noah Hanifin falling to #5 as the steal of the summer. Given that Lack (as well as Talbot) are entering contract years, great seasons will respectively force Carolina and Edmonton into tough contract decisions - and this is where Lehner's value to Buffalo really comes into play.

Contract Value

As stated before, the more shots a goaltender has faced over the course of his career, the better his future performance can be projected. Of the goaltenders traded this summer, only the soon-to-be 32-year old Antti Niemi had faced more career shots, and Dallas will be paying him $13.5M over the next three years to provide league average goaltending in a best case scenario. With Lack and Talbot, who are both set to be UFAs in 2016, Carolina and Edmonton will have just a few seasons worth of data to determine whether to extend them long term or not.

The Sabres and Sharks, meanwhile, will respectively have four and three seasons until their newly acquired goaltenders are eligible to be UFAs, giving both teams plenty of time for their goaltenders to get experience and for the two teams to make more informed decisions than the Hurricanes and Oilers will be able to next season. Though they both cost first round picks, the fact that Jones and Lehner both have high ceilings, are in their primes age-wise and are on $2.5-3M AAV contracts for the next few seasons makes them less risky bets in the long term (i.e., beyond next season) than Lack and Talbot. And in a worst case scenario that Lehner and/or Jones don't pan out, both will have relatively easy contracts to move on from as opposed to, say, the $10.4M tandem in Dallas, or what Talbot and Lack could hypothetically get paid if they have career years. The only other question left to answer is whether Buffalo made the right bet on Lehner.

Verdict

I had initially hoped that the Sabres would land Martin Jones, thinking he offered the best trade off between talent, youth, and cost to the Sabres. However, the fact that Jones was ultimately traded for a higher price has me thinking that Robin Lehner is a slightly better bet given he is two years younger than Jones and his recent run of bad luck should turn in Buffalo, as should Jones' good luck in San Jose. Additionally, Jones has just 1/3 of the body of work that Lehner has in the NHL. But what I am ultimately happy about is that the Sabres didn't acquire Talbot or Lack due to their upcoming contract situations nor a UFA goalie like Niemi or Karri Ramo, as average goaltending is readily available every summer. Great goaltending has to either be nurtured or acquired at a steep price (hence why Anaheim isn't pushing John Gibson or Frederik Andersen out the door). With no other goaltending prospects in the Sabres' pipeline being close to NHL-ready, Lehner provides the Sabres their best chance of developing a top 10 goaltender in the NHL within the next few seasons.

So I will trust that Tim Murray has done his homework on Lehner, recognizing the role bad luck has played thus far in his career, and did not acquire him simply because he's familiar with Lehner from his Ottawa days. I am also optimistic about the role Andrew Allen can play in Lehner's development, given his work with the Blackhawks' young goaltenders in Rockford and the fact Dan Bylsma hired him with Robin Lehner's development in mind. But even in a worse case scenario where Lehner does not pan out as hoped, his affordable contract would make it easy for Buffalo to move on from (and hey, the Lightning did have to go through Anders Lindback before they got to Ben Bishop and Andrei Vasilevskiy). When it comes to risk taking, I would rather see the Sabres swing for the fences in net than to be perpetually stuck in a state of goaltending mediocrity.  

NHL Draft Pick Valuation

When it comes to measuring NHL Entry Level draft pick value in the form of the NFL's draft value board, a ton of work has been done on this. But what I really cared about in when writing my analysis on the recent Robin Lehner, Cam Talbot, Martin Jones and Eddie Lack trades was the expected contributions of the players that those traded picks were selected with, as opposed to what those picks would have been worth to move up and down in the draft. So when I stumbled upon Scott Cullen's, my work was done for me. But I do think there are a lot of caveats that should be disclosed here in addition to the ones he highlights.

First off, the 1 to 10 scale is very subjective once you get up into the 8-9-10 range, particularly when we are separating out Generational from Elite players. There's also some scale comparability issues (e.g., the gap between a 4 and 1 is significantly less than a 10 and 7), but since the picks I'm dealing with in my analysis are further down the scale, I think the system does a nice job of getting in the right ballpark. It should also be noted that there's probably not much difference between a 4.7 and 4.8 in the below table (i.e., the Lehner and Talbot trades); but it's interesting to note that there's a clear hierarchy between the goalie trades, with Jones, Lehner/Talbot, Lack and Niemi's negotiating rights rating from most to least costly.

Where I think this system could use further refinement is making it more mathematical to account for the fact that we're only working with 20 drafts worth of data. Though the #21 pick that went over to Ottawa for Lehner is rated a 4.7, it actually is higher than several picks above it, but #21 should not be projected to have a higher expected value than #15-19 in future drafts. Smoothing this out with a best fit line would more definitively help teams value draft picks in terms of future vs. current NHLers as well as to identifies potential trading market inefficiencies such as position in lower round draft picks.

As far as my own application of Cullen's model I had to make a few estimations with the 2016 futures to get the Cam Talbot and Martin Jones trades into order. The 2016 7th round pick that the Rangers trade sent with Talbot to Edmonton was easy enough to estimate at around 1.5, given there's little variation in the expected value of players drafted in the 7th round. The 2016 1st rounder that the Sharks traded Boston is considerably more difficult.

For the first time in a decade, the Sharks can't be penciled in for a playoff spot. What was once a dominant possession team fell to being 'just' above average last season, and it's anyone's guess whether the infusion of Pete DeBoer, Paul Martin, Joel Ward and Martin Jones into next year's squad will be enough to get them back. Though I would predict they get back in given how unlucky the team was this past season, next year's first round pick is potentially worth even more than in past seasons due to the NHL's draft lottery format getting retooled to more closely resemble the NBA's (i.e., the top three spots are subject to a lottery vs. just the top pick). With all that said, I pegged the pick to be worth somewhere between a 1st round forward and a 1st round defenseman (assuming Boston doesn't take a goalie with that pick) at a 4.85. I also used Sean Kurlay's draft pick position (#133 in the 2011 draft) to help highlight just how much the Sharks had to pay to acquire Jones.

Hockey Marcels Evaluation

As part of a separate piece that I wrote evaluating the Robin Lehner trade, I used a hockey version of baseball's Marcel system as developed by Garik16 to project the save percentages of goaltender trade options the Sabres had to choose from before they pulled the trigger on a swap with Ottawa. In the interest of space in that other piece, I saved my discussion of the projection system for those interested in this post.

For starters, my main deviation from the original Marcels hockey system was that I wanted to project 5v5 Save % as opposed to regular Save %, with the thinking that 5v5 was a slightly more reliable indicator of goaltender quality. Speaking of sample size, the considerably small amount of High Danger Zone (DZ) Saves that Lehner, Martin Jones, Cam Talbot and Eddie Lack have had to make thus far in their careers made it far from the best tool to project going forward, despite it being the most correlated with overall goaltending success.

Some may also take up issue with the use of weighting the most recent season more heavily than the seasons before, something that affects Lehner much more negatively than the other goalies in this sample due to his tumultuous 2014-15 season. But even when I messed around with increasing the importance of saves from more than one season ago, the effect it had on the goaltenders in this sample was pretty minimal. In addition to past performance, the regression to the mean methodology (which adds 1,525 shots saved at the league average rate to each goaltenders prior four years) has a huge impact on projected performance in that a goalie that's below the league average has his projection pulled up - i.e., Lehner. Some may disagree with regressing a below average goalie to the mean, but if we are to account for exorbitant amount of good luck that Jones and Talbot experienced in their stops, then we should also adjust for bad luck Lehner likely experienced in Ottawa.

Hockey Marcels is also based on a Bayesian approach developed by Brian MacDonald, for which has a niftier way to account for the small sample size issue. The lesser number of shots a goaltender has faced in his career, the higher the variance is for a save percentage that a goaltender is expected to have with 95% confidence. As a result, the Bayesian approach would forecast goaltenders averages in the ballpark of the following values, highlighting that it is impossible to deem any one of the five goaltenders as being a significantly superior option based on forecasted performance alone:

But what I like better about Hockey Marcels is a) it applies a weighting methodology that places higher value on saves made in more recent seasons and b) it accounts for aging. While I am interested in further exploring the aging methodology, I will save that for another time; what's important to me about any projection system is that younger goalies' future performance should be regressed relatively less than older goalies. As a result, a soon-to-be 32-year old, .924 5v5 Career Save % goalie like Antti Niemi is projected to have a lower save percentage over the next three seasons than soon-to-be 24-year old, .918 5v5 Career Save % goalie like Robin Lehner.

As also highlighted in the other article though, there's many downfalls to simply using Save % to evaluating goaltender quality - hence ongoing research into and development of alternate measures of goaltending quality such as Adjusted Save % and Stephen Valiquette's Royal Road project. In addition, luck can play a huge role in early career save percentages - hence why an undrafted goaltender like Martin Jones can fetch a 1st round pick for Boston despite having an unsustainable High DZ Save % in 36 career NHL games.

While I have analysis on the Lehner trade to finish up, the direction I would like to toy with tacking Marcels is a weighting methodology by DZ, and then apply aging to that Adjusted Save %. Long term, all goaltenders should have Small DZ Save %s in the 97%-98% - of the 49 NHL goaltenders with 3,000 shots against from 2007-15, only Tim Thomas (98.12%) and Chris Mason (96.98%) fall outside of that range - while the weighting regression methodology currently being applied to overall Save % should be applied to High DZ Save %s. Medium DZ may be more of a hybrid between Low and High DZ, and is where much of the experimentation will come in.

The Four Types of Players the Sabres Should/Will Pursue this Summer

Originally submitted as a fan post on Die By The Blade and was selected for front page viewing.

As opposed to looking ahead to the next couple week's and giving my opinion on why "Buffalo should sign Player X, trade Y assets for a return of Z etc.", I decided to highlight the four types of players I think the Sabres should/will pursue and to list some of the players that would fit the bill. Not to shoot down anyone else's specific ideas, but when it comes to a rebuild of this magnitude, up to a dozen options can fill a few major holes on the roster. So in order of importance, here are the four types of players I think Buffalo should pursue over the upcoming two weeks.

1. Starting Goalie

This one's pretty obvious, eh? Tim Murray has laid out his plans for goalie for this summer, describing it as "a moving plan. We would love to trade for a ‘youngish’ goalie. If that doesn’t work, we would trade for a real good short-term goalie who is older. If we could sign the best or second-best free agent goalie, we would be happy with that too". In my opinion, Tim Murray is definitely taking the right approach here, as a young goalie who can grow with the core is preferable to one that is a stopgap solution. But in either case, any goaltender that can be the full-time starter is preferable to entering next season with a platoon of Chad Johnson and Anders Lindback in net.

So who will the future starter of the Buffalo Sabres be? Tim Murray has claimed he's already talked to five teams about goaltending options, and I'd reasonably assume that at least three of them are the NY Rangers for Cam Talbot (as confirmed by Darren Dreger), LA Kings for Martin Jones (who the Sabres were rumored to be pursuing as part of a Tyler Myers trade back in February), and Tim Murray's old club the Ottawa Senators for either Robin Lehner or Craig Anderson (one of which will definitely be traded this offseason). If I were a betting man, I would guess that Murray has also talked to Vancouver about Eddie Lack and Anaheim about Frederik Andersen and John Gibson (although the Ducks' desire to go into next season with both makes a trade for either of them highly unlikely).

Not that 5v5 Sv% is a 'be all, end all' stat when evaluating goaltender quality, but given Martin Jones and Cam Talbot each have identical 5v5s of 93.43% over their brief NHL careers, either one in a trade would give the Sabres a long-term option in net. While Talbot has a larger sample size to base future performance off of than Jones (2,650 vs. 1,490 minutes), the high demand for Talbot (potentially costing a team a first round pick), the inability to extend Talbot (a 2016 UFA) until January 1st and Talbot being two years older than Jones would, in my opinion, make Jones a better value for Buffalo to pursue.

If acquiring either Jones or Talbot doesn't pan out for the Sabres, I would be happy with either Robin Lehner or Eddie Lack depending on what Buffalo does in the draft. Lehner has perhaps the greatest upside of the Sabres likely trade targets given he's only 23 years old. However, Lehner's below average performance in a limited sample size (perpuckalytics, a career 5v5 save % of 91.88% places him squarely between Scott Clemennsen and Martin Gerber) on an Ottawa team that has seen Craig Anderson and Andrew Hammond shine would give me a lot of concern. But if the Sabres take a goalie such as Ilya Samsonov or Matej Tomek with a high draft pick, then I would rather see Buffalo acquire Lack to give the Sabres average goaltending over the next few seasons than to have to ride the highs and lows of a Robin Lehner / Chad Johnson platoon in net.

In any scenario, I do not have any interest in Craig Anderson given he's already 34 and still has three years remaining on his deal, nor in Devan Dubynk at his current asking price. If Buffalo does go the veteran goaltender route, I would rather see them take a pass at signing Antii Niemi or trading for Jonas Hiller, who has just one year remaining on his deal with Calgary. But in any scenario, I don't have any concerns about Buffalo's goaltending next season given the surplus of options out there. What does concern me is Buffalo's ability to acquire a...

2. Two-way, top six right winger

Finding a top six right winger that can contribute on both sides of the ice will be the most elusive thing for the Sabres to find next season. Unless Patrick Kaleta is resigned, the Sabres' only natural right winger headed into next season will beBrian Gionta, with Tyler Ennis, Zemgus Girgensons and (assuming he's retained) Cody Hodgson able to play the position. Though the Sabres' pipeline of right wing prospects is promising (Justin Bailey, Nicholas Baptiste and Hudson Fasching), it'll be a couple seasons before any of them are expected to compete for a top six role. This is an area that, if properly addressed, would significantly help speed up Buffalo's rebuild.

If Buffalo were to go the UFA route to fill this hole, the name I would love to see them go after is Michael Frolik. While "Mr. Game 7" Justin Williams would be a sexier signing, Frolik is a younger option (just 27 years old) that, over the last two years, has become one of Winnipeg's best players at driving possession while being able to chip in 15-20 goals per season. He's also represented by Allan Walsh and, accordingly, is looking to ring the bell come July 1st, probably costing in excess of $5M per for 5 years. But similar to Anton Stralman last summer, the team that is able to look past the average offensive stats and recognize the value he's able to bring in versatility and driving possession will be rewarded with a top six, two way forward that would be a key cog for the Sabres in the both the short and long-term.

And if not Frolik? This is where things get tricky, as there's a lack of natural RWs on both the UFA and trade market that are both attainable and would be upgrades over the Sabres' current stable of forwards. For example, Patrick Sharp and T.J. Oshie would be great acquisitions but would cost too much for a Buffalo team that is still early in its rebuild; Joel Ward is already 34 and acquiring him would require Buffalo to hand out a terrible contract; Loui Eriksson among other players has a limited NTC that likely includes the Sabres and so on.

Unlike the other options on this list, this is the one area where I think the Sabres should definitely be targeting a specific player. Given Allan Walsh will likely sell Michael Frolik to the highest bidder, signing Frolik is definitely an attainable goal for the Sabres. But if the Sabres are unable to acquire Frolik, then they should at least try to acquire a veteran LW to be a stopgap solution in the Top 6 like Chris Kunitz from Pittsburgh, who can both contribute and be an additional veteran presence for Eichel and Reinhart next season.

One last note: as great as filling this hole by signing Brandon Saad to an offer sheet would be in theory, there is no chance of that working for Buffalo. The only way Chicago would consider not matching a Buffalo offer sheet would be for the Sabres to sign Kruger at an AAV that would mean Chicago gets multiple first round picks, which would include next year's (i.e., potentially Auston Matthews or Sean Day) as compensation, and that's assuming Saad even decides to sign an offer sheet. Same thing goes for Marcus Kruger in the Sabres' pursuit of...

3. Defensive-minded Center

While Buffalo has one of the strongest pipelines in the NHL at center between Jack Eichel, Samson Reinhart, Zemgus Girgesons, Johan Larsson and Mikhail Grigorenko, the 2015-16 Sabres should also be expected to be very weak in their own zone due to this youth and inexperience at the position unless an additional move or two is made for a center with significant NHL experience. While I would say this makes acquiring a defensive-minded center significantly more important than a top six right winger, the number of options available for an experienced center makes it a lower priority than getting a top six winger.

In a perfect world, this is where Tim Murray figures out how to acquire Ryan O'Reilly without having to give up an exorbitant amount of assets. However, I'm inclined to think Colorado's asking price is going to be too rich for the Sabres' liking until the Avs are up against the gun to move him (i.e., during training camp). The Sabres could also opt to seek out a different 'youngish', top six center option on the trade market (e.g., Brandon Sutter) or moderately overpay a productive veteran like Eric Fehr, Jiri Tlusty or Antoine Vermette to shore up Buffalo's defensive center depth.

However, I'd rather see the Sabres acquire a purely defensive, bottom six center on the cheap to eat up a significant number of the defensive zone starts in the short term, a la Michal Handzus with the Kings during Anze Kopitar's first few years in the league. Whether its acquiring a veteran from a team that needs cap/salary relief (such as R.J. Umberger from the Flyers or Sabres alum Paul Gaustad from Nashville), or giving a UFA veteran a $4-5M, one year deal that can also be a strong veteran influence for the team (such as Shawn Horcoff), both routes would help the Sabres fill a critical short term hole without giving up a large number of assets / cap space.

4. Veteran defenseman

If the season were to start today, the Sabres defense would consist of Zach Bogosian, Rasmus Ristolainen and Mark Psysk on the right side, and Josh Gorges, Nikita Zadorov, Jacob McCabe and Mike Weber on the left. While this is a significant improvement over last season's stable, the Sabres badly need at least one more veteran defenseman in the mix to create competition in camp and give the organization depth for when injuries occur.

Similar to the issue with signing Joel Ward, signing a defenseman already in their mid 30s like Johnny Oduya, Zybnek Michalek or Paul Martin would likely require the Sabres hand out a bad contract. However, I would be more okay with an overpay on defense due to the drop-off in defensive/two-way defenseman options on the UFA and trade markets. That is assuming the contract term for any of the previously mentioned guys is limited to 4 years (i.e., the term that Rob Scuderi and Andrew Ference received in 2013). While the Sabres should be aiming for an addition to the top four, I would also be fine with the Sabres signing a defensive defenseman such as Barret Jackman or Adam McQuaid via UFA, or trading for one such as Mark Stuart or Kevin Klein (the latter potentially being packaged together with Cam Talbot), if they can't acquire one to bolster the top 4.

But please, at the very least, let's not enter next season with any of Jamie McBain, Andrej Meszaros, Andre Benoit and Tyson Strachan as full time NHLers again. These players did wonders for the last two tanks, but it's time to turn a new page on defense.