Simon-Pier Brunet’s path to the Buffalo Sabres took a turn this fall, but the organization is still keeping him in the fold.
The 20-year-old defenseman, selected by Buffalo in the fourth round of the 2024 NHL Draft in Las Vegas, is set to head to Merrimack College in Massachusetts after spending four seasons in the QMJHL with Victoriaville. At 6-foot-2 and 205 pounds, Brunet comes with the kind of frame that stands out, even if the offense has not really shown up yet in junior hockey’s typically high-scoring league.
Buffalo’s interest in Brunet is rooted more in what he can shut down than what he can create. Elite Prospects Draft Guide described the right-shot defender as a player who “motors up and down the ice with a sound skating posture for a player of his 6-foot-2 size.
With his skating and reach, he denies space from the opposition, closes on them in transition, and guards the front of the net. Attackers can’t go through him.
He walls them off from high-danger areas.”
There is also a procedural wrinkle that makes his NCAA move notable. Under the old system, the Sabres would have needed to sign Brunet by June to preserve his exclusive rights. The new CBA changes that, allowing Buffalo to keep those rights even as he heads to college.
Brunet was also a junior teammate of Rochester Americans defenseman Vsevolod Komarov, adding another link between his development track and the Sabres’ pipeline.
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For the Sabres, that means a few familiar frustrations are already bubbling up. Some young players who have put together real NHL or AHL stretches were slotted lower than expected, while others with thinner rsums were placed ahead of them, a mismatch that has fans re-litigating how these lists are built in the first place. The individual placements are the part that will get debated longest, because the rankings seem to leave plenty of room for disagreement before anyone even gets to the names that were left out. [Read more 🡒]
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For Buffalo, the appeal is obvious: if even one of these players takes a meaningful step, the ripple effect could be felt throughout the lineup. The challenge is just as clear, though, because each comes with a different layer of uncertainty, from health to availability to how quickly a young player can translate promise into steady NHL impact. The Sabres do not need all three to become stars overnight, but they do need enough of a breakthrough to make this season feel like more than another wait-and-see exercise. [Read more 🡒]
Sabres Prospects Face A Crossroads Buffalo Cant Afford To Ignore
With the Sabres trying to steady themselves after a wave of departures, the organization is leaning hard on its pipeline to help fill the gap. Daxon Rudolph looks like one of the next young names to keep an eye on, while Radim Mrtka is on a different track altogether, still developing but already giving Buffalo reason to think about what he could become down the road.
The real interest in this group is how many different timelines the Sabres are juggling at once. Some prospects are close enough to force a decision soon, while others are still sorting out where they fit and how fast they can rise, which makes every contract choice and every season of development matter a little more for a team that cannot afford to miss on its next wave. [Read more 🡒]