BUFFALO QUANT DESK
Sabres · Players

Sabres: who's running hot, and who's likely to heat up

Power, Quinn and Benson are running furthest ahead of their history; McLeod, Doan and Norris are likely to heat up. Our player rating, tested on last season, beat going by pace.

November 11, 2026 · Buffalo Quant Desk

Seventeen games in, Owen Power, Jack Quinn and Zach Benson are scoring well above what their track records say, and Ryan McLeod, Josh Doan and Josh Norris well below. Expect both groups to drift back toward normal.

Numbers through November 10, the Sabres' first 17 games. Each player's card has his latest numbers, updated daily.

Pace vs. history

Hot and cold, by the numbers

Seventeen games is about a fifth of a season. Over that stretch, a few lucky bounces can make a player look like a star or a bust. So for each Sabre we compare two things: his pace (his points so far, stretched over 82 games) and his rating, our best guess at his points per 82 games from here on, built from this season and the last three.

Player Points so far Pace (per 82) Rating (per 82) If he plays all 65 remaining games
Tage Thompson 19 in 17 92 76 41 goals, 79 points
Rasmus Dahlin 10 in 14 59 66 16 goals, 63 points
Zach Benson 15 in 17 72 53 16 goals, 57 points
Jack Quinn 16 in 17 77 53 27 goals, 58 points
Josh Norris 5 in 17 24 45 21 goals, 41 points
Ryan McLeod 3 in 15 16 43 11 goals, 37 points
Josh Doan 4 in 17 19 42 20 goals, 38 points
Noah Ostlund 10 in 17 48 39 16 goals, 41 points
Owen Power 14 in 17 68 39 8 goals, 45 points
Peyton Krebs 9 in 17 43 35 8 goals, 36 points
Jiri Kulich 3 in 10 25 34 15 goals, 30 points
Mattias Samuelsson 10 in 17 48 33 7 goals, 36 points
Konsta Helenius 3 in 11 22 32 10 goals, 29 points
Olen Zellweger 6 in 16 31 26 10 goals, 27 points
Louis Crevier 1 in 15 6 19 3 goals, 16 points
Beck Malenstyn 3 in 17 14 17 6 goals, 16 points
Zach Metsa 2 in 15 11 15 2 goals, 14 points

Of the 17 players in the table, 8 are scoring faster than their rating and 9 slower.

Running hot.

Owen Power is on pace for 68 points per 82 games; his rating says 39. Most of it is assists: 12 of his 14 points. An assist needs a teammate to score, so a hot stretch for his linemates lifts his total too.

Jack Quinn is on pace for 77 points per 82 games; his rating says 53. He has 9 goals on chances worth 6.1, so he's scored 2.9 more than his chances. Finishing like that rarely lasts.

Zach Benson is on pace for 72 points per 82 games; his rating says 53. Same story as Power: 13 of his 15 points are assists.

Tage Thompson is running hot too, on a 92-point pace. His rating of 76 is still the best on the team, and at that rate he'd finish with about 41 goals and 79 points if he plays every game.

Likely to heat up: Ryan McLeod, on pace for 16 with a rating of 43; Josh Doan, on pace for 19 with a rating of 42; Josh Norris, on pace for 24 with a rating of 45; Louis Crevier, on pace for 6 with a rating of 19. Their ratings say they should score faster from here.

Where the rating comes from

The source: the NHL's own play-by-play for every game since the start of 2023-24: every goal, assist and shot, and where each shot came from.

What a chance is worth. Not every shot is equal. Of the 360,675 shots since 2023-24 that weren't blocked (not counting empty-net shots), the ones from within 10 feet went in 13.7% of the time; from 40 feet or more, 1.9%. We give every shot its chance of going in, based on where and how it was taken, and add them up. That total is what a player's chances were worth. Jack Quinn's are worth 6.1 goals this season; he has 9.

The math, using Owen Power. For assists, 2026-27's 12 assists in 17 games count fully; 2025-26's 21 assists in 81 games count at half; 2024-25's 33 assists in 79 games count at a quarter; 2023-24's 27 assists in 76 games count at an eighth. Then we add 10 made-up games at the average for a defenseman this season (0.27 assists a game), so a short track record doesn't swing wildly. That works out to 31.2 assists per 82 games. Goals work the same way, from the chances he creates, adjusted for how well he's finished over his career: 7.5 goals per 82 games. 31.2 assists plus 7.5 goals is about 39 points, his rating. His 14 points in 17 games is a 68-point pace; his history says to expect a lot less. The finishing adjustment is pulled toward average, because chances carry over from season to season much better than finishing does, but it still matters for a sharpshooter: it adds about 29% to Tage Thompson's goals.

How we checked it

Our rating beat simply going by pace when we tested it on last season. We tuned the rating on 2024-25 only. Then we went back to last season, 2025-26, stopped the clock after 17 games, and had the rating project every NHL skater's rest of the season using only player stats known at that point (632 players). Then we compared with what actually happened.

The test

The rating missed a player's rest-of-season points by 6.4 on average. Going by his pace missed by 9.5; going by his last season, 7.3; and guessing every player is average, 12.2. For goals alone, it missed by 3.3, against 5.3 for pace. It also beat both at the halfway point of the season, though by less (4.3, against 4.8 for pace and 5.1 for last season), because by then a season's pace means more.

What it means

For the stat-heads