The Buffalo Sabres’ 2026-27 grading project is back, and the first snapshot already gives a pretty clear read on how the season is being viewed game by game.
After one contest, Jack Quinn sits at the top with an 8.5, followed by Zach Benson and Noah Ostlund at 8.0. Owen Power is next at 7.5, with Mattias Samuelsson at 7.0.
Josh Doan lands at 6.5, while Tage Thompson, Josh Norris and Konsta Helenius are all at 6.0. Rasmus Dahlin, Louis Crevier and Ryan McLeod are tied at 5.5, Jiri Kulich checks in at 5.0, and Zach Metsa is at 4.5.
Beck Malenstyn and Sam Carrick both earned 4.0, Matt Grzelcyk is at 3.5, Peyton Krebs at 2.5 and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen at 2.0.
That opening board comes from the Sabre Noise system, which assigns every player a 1-to-10 mark after each game and then rolls those numbers into an average over the full 84-game schedule. The idea is to capture a player’s overall impact across the season, not just one night’s box score line.
Last season’s version of the project covered all 82 regular-season games, with Rasmus Dahlin, Tage Thompson and Zach Benson finishing as the top three. It also tracked Buffalo’s 13 playoff games during the run to the second round of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs, where Benson finished atop the grade book.
The roster looks mostly familiar this time around, with Alex Tuch and Bowen Byram standing out as the major departures from last year’s drought-breaking group. Buffalo is counting on young players such as Benson, Owen Power, Josh Doan, Jack Quinn, Jiri Kulich, Noah Ostlund, Konsta Helenius, Olen Zellweger and Louis Crevier to help replace that lost production.
One issue still hangs over the whole operation: the crease. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Alex Lyon and Colten Ellis formed a workable three-goalie setup last season, but neither Luukkonen nor Lyon could stabilize things in the playoffs. That left Buffalo dealing with a summer of Connor Hellebuyck trade rumors.
The grading system itself is built around the eye test, not a pure analytics model. It’s meant to offer a different lens than the numbers-heavy player cards floating around social media, and it’s expected that the results will settle as the sample grows.
Sequencing matters, too. A hat trick in a tight win carries more weight than the same three goals in a lopsided game, and the system is designed to reflect that kind of context.
By the time the regular season ends in mid-April, the goal is to have a more complete picture of each player’s performance across the full grind of the schedule. And if Buffalo gets back to the 2027 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the grades will continue there, separate from the final regular-season totals.
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The timing matters, too, because Buffalo is still waiting for some help on the blue line. Olen Zellweger was a full participant in Fridays practice and is moving closer to coming out of concussion protocol, which could give the Sabres another needed option on defense just as they try to turn edge and engagement into something more lasting. [Read more 🡒]