The Buffalo Sabres keep treating Peyton Krebs like a player he isn’t, and the usage has already become one of the strangest early-season wrinkles on the roster.
Last season, Lindy Ruff pushed Krebs onto the first line with Tage Thompson and the since-departed Alex Tuch. The trio had some modest success, but Krebs’ offensive limitations showed up fast in the second-round playoff series against the Montreal Canadiens. He didn’t record a point as Buffalo lost in seven games, and he eventually slid down the lineup when the Sabres tried to jump-start Thompson and Tuch against Montreal.
That made Krebs’ spot at the start of training camp even more curious. After general manager Jarmo Kekalainen gave him a four-year, $18 million extension over the offseason, Krebs was back on the top line. He then moved into the middle six once the regular season began, but even that has come at a cost: the much more offensively gifted Jiri Kulich has been stuck with limited fourth-line shifts.
There’s no denying Krebs has value. He works, he competes, he looks out for his teammates, and he’s the kind of player coaches trust in the trenches. His contract should hold up fine in the NHL’s rising-cap environment.
But Buffalo keeps acting as if he’s still the high-end playmaker the Vegas Golden Knights drafted seven years ago, and that simply hasn’t been the player he’s become. Krebs has 134 points, with 42 goals and 92 assists, in 380 career NHL games. Even last season’s career-high 39 points came with the very favorable deployment alongside Thompson and Tuch.
The cleaner fit for Krebs is obvious. He should be on the fourth line with Sam Carrick and Beck Malenstyn, and he should also be part of the group replacing Tuch on the penalty kill.
Instead, the Sabres have not used him on the PK through two games, even while asking players like Josh Norris and Jack Quinn to help out there. That’s a strange choice, especially since Krebs has been used on the power play, where he’s much less of a natural fit.
The Sabres need to stop chasing the idea that Krebs is going to turn into a top-six scoring threat. He’s not becoming a 70-point player in the NHL, and his track record has never suggested that kind of ceiling. The smarter move is to use him as an energy forward on the fourth line and ease him into a second PK role, where he can add value without being asked to carry more offense than he can realistically provide.
That issue becomes even messier once Jason Zucker returns. Zucker has been out to start the 2026-27 season while recovering from offseason sports hernia surgery, and Ruff hasn’t offered a firm timetable for his comeback. The team originally believed the absence wouldn’t drag on too long, but when Zucker is ready, Buffalo will have a lineup decision to make.
Normally, that kind of move would come from the fourth line, with Carrick looking like the most likely candidate to sit. But that would only create another problem by thinning out the club’s defensively minded forwards. Buffalo is already using one top-nine player on the bottom line in Kulich, and Zucker’s return only makes that arrangement more complicated if Krebs stays higher in the lineup.
At full strength, the Sabres are left trying to force pieces into places that don’t quite fit. Noah Ostlund doesn’t really belong on the bottom line.
Krebs belongs there more than anywhere else, though it’s still unclear whether Buffalo will actually use him that way. Dropping Zach Benson there, as the team did at times last season, would be a mistake.
Injuries may sort some of this out eventually, but the bigger picture still matters. It helps explain why there was so much talk that Kekalainen might use his forward depth to pursue a roster upgrade elsewhere over the summer, perhaps even at goalie with Winnipeg Jets starter Connor Hellebuyck.
Instead, Buffalo has watched incumbent No. 1 Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen struggle out of the gate while Kulich sits on the fourth line.
It’s still early, and no one should make a final verdict this quickly. But Kekalainen took heat for not adding enough in the offseason, and nothing about the start of the season has done anything to quiet that criticism.
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Quinn is off to a strong start, while Kulich continues to be viewed as a key part of the long-term build, which only raises the stakes on what comes next. For a team trying to shape a more stable core, getting those deals right matters just as much as any move already made, and it puts the Sabres in a familiar spot where todays progress is tied closely to the next round of negotiations. [Read more 🡒]