During the Buffalo Sabres’ long playoff drought, the draft board kept putting them in the same familiar spot: picking high, year after year. And with that pressure to get back to the postseason, the organization often took the fast lane with prospects, giving them NHL jobs before they were fully ready.
That approach can look bold in the moment. It can also backfire quickly. A young player gets thrown into the league, struggles, and suddenly the development path gets messy - sometimes enough to stall progress instead of speeding it up.
Three former Sabres prospects fit that pattern.
Casey Mittelstadt arrived with plenty of buzz after going eighth overall in the 2017 NHL Draft. After one more season at the University of Minnesota, he signed his entry-level deal and jumped right in. In six games, he flashed immediate offense with one goal and four assists, which likely set the bar too high for what came next.
Buffalo opened the 2018-19 season with Mittelstadt on the roster and no AHL stop in between. The results were rough: 25 points in 77 games and a career-low 39.7% in faceoff wins.
The Sabres eventually changed course the next season, sending him to Rochester after he began the year in Buffalo and continued to struggle. That stint helped, as he put up 25 points in 36 AHL games.
Mittelstadt later delivered his best season in 2022-23, finishing with 59 points, a career high. The Sabres traded him the next year before the deadline in the deal for Bowen Byram. His final full season in Buffalo showed real productivity, but a longer run in the AHL earlier might have gotten him to that level sooner.
Devon Levi’s path was bumpy in a different way. Buffalo brought the goalie up to the NHL soon after his final season at Northeastern University. In seven games, he went 5-2-0 with a .905 save percentage and a 2.94 goals against average.
The Sabres then made their intentions clear the next season, handing Levi the first four starts. He went 1-3-0 and allowed three or more goals in three of those outings.
With Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Eric Comrie also on the roster, Buffalo sent Levi down and kept moving him between levels. That season, he appeared in 23 games for the Sabres and 26 for Rochester.
In 2024-25, he played only seven games in Buffalo and 42 in Rochester.
Last season, the Sabres left Levi in Rochester for the full year, and the results were steadier. He went 23-20-12 with a .904 save percentage and finished stronger in the playoffs, posting a .919 save percentage in three games.
Even with that improvement, Buffalo had no room for him this upcoming season, so the club moved him to the Edmonton Oilers for a third-round pick. An earlier full season in Rochester might have given him a better runway in Buffalo.
Nikita Zadorov is the clearest example of how the rules and the roster can push a young player into a tough spot. Buffalo took him 16th overall in the 2013 NHL Draft, and he played seven games the next season before making the jump full-time. He logged 60 games and skipped the AHL entirely because of the CHL-NHL rule in the CBA.
At 19, he couldn’t simply be sent to Rochester even if the Sabres had wanted to. The only option would have been a return to the OHL, so Buffalo kept him in the NHL.
That decision did not pay off right away. Zadorov was a healthy scratch for several games, was suspended twice for breaking team rules, and finished with 15 points and a minus-10 rating.
After the 2014-15 season, he was traded to the Colorado Avalanche as part of the Ryan O’Reilly deal. He went on to have a productive career in Colorado, Chicago, Calgary, Vancouver, and now recently Boston.
The Sabres have plenty of reasons to feel better about their prospect pipeline now. But these three are reminders of what can happen when patience runs out too early.
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