The losses of leading scorer Thompson and emerging sniper Quinn were fatal
The losses of leading scorer Thompson and emerging sniper Quinn were fatal
The Buffalo Sabres are four points behind in the Eastern Conference wildcard race, which currently has them as a 50-to-1(1.9%) shot to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs according to Moneypuck.com. With a margin so small, it means that one or two things going a different way would likely translate in the Sabres ending their 13-year playoff drought.
Every team deals with injuries throughout an 82-game regular season, but those who make the playoffs are able to absorb the absence of key players and prevail. It is impossible to know what effect the injury to rookie Matthew Savoie before training camp had on the club. It set the 19-year-old back to the point that he could not play in a preseason game and was sent back to the WHL after playing one regular season game.
Tage Thompson’s hand injury in mid-November kept him out of the lineup for three weeks, but it took him nearly another month before he began to return to the form he showed last season, when he scored a career-high 47 goals.
Perhaps the biggest loss occurred last summer, when Jack Quinn suffered an Achilles injury in offseason training. The 22-year-old was coming off an excellent showing for Canada at the World Championships, and along with tournament top forward J-J Peterka, the young wingers were expected to shoulder a heavier offensive workload. Quinn returned earlier than expected in mid-December, and showed little rust, scoring five goals in 17 games, but was hit with the injury bug again just before the All-Star break, with a lower-body injury that required surgery and kept him out two months.
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"He's been having a rough year, but he's just an unbelievable professional guy." Sabres leading scorer Rasmus Dahlin said. "He's a shooter...The release he's got, he's just got to continue to shoot and he will be a top scorer in this league."
There is no way how much of an effect a fully healthy Quinn would have had on Buffalo’s fortunes this season. After returning in late March, the Ottawa native went goalless in his first four games before scoring twice in the Sabres 4-2 win over Philadelphia on Friday, putting him on nearly a 30-goal pace, which would put him up there with Peterka and Thompson for the club lead.
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