Sabres Head Coach Lindy Ruff dropped a bombshell Friday afternoon when he announced that captain Rasmus Dahlin will return to Sweden on a leave of absence in order to spend time with his fiancée Carolina Matovac as she continues to recover from a heart transplant operation she underwent over the summer.
Ruff said there is no timeline for Dahlin’s return.
“I’m very passionate about the fact that no one would want to walk in his shoes and to have dealt with what he has dealt with,” Ruff said. “(Dahlin) has the support of everybody on this. This is larger than hockey.”
Ruff is absolutely correct on that point, obviously.
Anyone who has experienced a medical crisis with a loved one knows how difficult it is to manage not only that situation, but to also take care of daily work/life issues while trying to compartmentalize the emergency at home. Now imagine that your day job is to perform in front of tens of thousands of people with hundreds of thousands more watching on TV while your loved one is thousands of miles away. It’s incredibly impressive that Dahlin even attempted to play this year considering the situation he’s experiencing on the home front.
It feels callous to even comment on what Dahlin’s absence on the ice will mean for the team, but of course the team will miss his play on a nightly basis. Bo Byram and Owen Power will have to step up while Dahlin is away and players with smaller roles like Conor Timmins will see more ice time. Michael Kesselring will be counted on to provide more offense.
Prior to the news about Dahlin, the Sabres were already dealing with substantial injuries to top players as Josh Norris is out indefinitely, Jason Zucker has been placed on IR with an illness (which is a wild designation) and Zach Benson missed last game, although the feisty winger is trending to return this weekend.
The Sabres are truly teetering on the precipice of disaster here as they cling to NHL relevancy with a 5-5-3 record through 13 games. The loss of Dahlin has the potential to send them into the kind of losing spiral fans have seen many times over the past 14 years.
This is where the Sabres general manager needs to step up and make a deal to inject some life into the roster while there’s still something to play for this season. Consider this: The Sabres are only four points out of third place in the division despite all of the chaos and instability currently surrounding their roster. Unfortunately, Adams has proven several times that he is hesitant to make a move when pressed on it – he famously made no roster changes to the team last year as he watched his club lose 13 games in a row.
To borrow a phrase uttered by many Sabres players during last season’s losing streak: This can’t happen again.
While the Sabres are incredibly thin at center and are now down a crucial piece on their blue line, they still have trade pieces in net at both the NHL and AHL level that should be maximized to stabilize the NHL roster. There is no need for the team to carry three goalies on the active NHL roster when they have so many glaring holes elsewhere.
If there is a market for goaltender Ukko Pekka Luukkonen – and granted, that is a big if when considering the $4.75 million per year he’s owed until 2029 – then the Sabres need to explore that and see if there are players who could better serve the team now. Alex Lyon, Colten Ellis and, if need be, Devon Levi can provide the same level of goaltending that UPL has delivered over his career.
As for players available on other rosters, forward Nick Robertson of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Yegor Chinakhov of the Columbus Blue Jackets have both been rumored to be available at various times this season. Either one of those players would make a massive difference to a depleted Sabres middle-six.
We’ll see if Adams has learned from the mistakes of previous years and is now willing to make that kind of bold move.