With the way the Sabres season ended last year, many fans — myself included — have a positive attitude entering this year. However, expectations should not be through the roof like they are with the Bills.

While the Bills are Super Bowl contenders, the Sabres are still lingering around the bottom half of the NHL and their highest hopes should be maybe fighting for a playoff spot. The Sabres’ roster has slightly improved from last year, and that, coupled with playoff teams in the Atlantic Division continuing to age and lose pieces, could make the Sabres more competitive. But they are still quite a bit behind Toronto, Tampa Bay, Florida and Boston.

The issues holding back Buffalo were not addressed with any urgency in the offseason and the course of action continues to be patience through prospect development. Buffalo’s biggest problem has been its goaltending ever since the departure of Ryan Miller and the current plan of action is to wait and see which of the prospects will eventually take over the net. While waiting for its prospects to turn into studs in net, Buffalo has deployed a number of forgettable names in net and its newest subject to be thrown to the fire is Eric Comrie.

General manager Kevyn Adams locked in Comrie on a two-year deal at $1.8 million per season after the 27-year-old had the best pro season of his career, posting a .920 save percentage and 2.58 goals against average in a backup role with the Winnipeg Jets.

Rasmus Dahlin

While Comrie certainly should be a step up from the six netminders who defended the Sabres crease last season, it’s very evident his two-year deal is intended to serve as a bridge to prospects Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen in Rochester, Devon Levi at Northeastern University or Erik Portillo with the University of Michigan. The 41-year-old Craig Anderson returns on another one-year deal to serve as the backup and at that age it means Buffalo will certainly give some looks to Luukkonen throughout the season.

With that tandem in net, Buffalo’s goaltending doesn’t hold up against the other starters like Andrei Vasilevskiy in Tampa Bay, Spencer Knight and Sergei Bobrovski in Florida, Jeremy Swayman in Boston and Ilya Samsonov in Toronto.

While the goaltending is very important for success, if Buffalo can just get some consistency of average to slightly above-average performances in net then it will be a much more competitive team. What can help provide some consistency will be the Buffalo defensive core taking the next step and proving it can be one of the best groups in the NHL in the near future.

While it might look like it is too soon, Buffalo signed Mattias Samuelsson to a seven-year extension which will kick in next season at $4,285,714 per season. Samuelsson’s extension is not necessarily a deserved one, but rather an investment and commitment to the current core Buffalo is assembling.

Samuelsson is purely a defensive defenseman with some offensive upside, but his true role will be to help Rasmus Dahlin flourish offensively. That pair is expected to have the biggest improvement this season and the future success of the franchise will rely on it.

Tage Thompson

After that duo, high expectations will be on the shoulders of 2021 No. 1 pick Owen Power to be in the race for the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie. In order to help Power’s rookie campaign, Buffalo signed its biggest free agent in defensive defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin.

Lyubushkin, similar to Samuelsson, is mainly a defensive fixture who will be there to help clean up the expected mistakes of a young offensive defenseman. If Lyubushkin doesn’t hitch himself to Power’s hip the other options will be Henri Jokiharju, Jacob Bryson, Casey Fitzgerald and possibly Lawrence Pilut.

Really highlighting the commitment to its homegrown talent was Buffalo avoiding bringing any talent to the forward group from outside the system. The two new faces will be Jack Quinn and JJ Peterka who shined in the AHL last season with Rochester.

Buffalo is very clearly betting on Tage Thompson to replicate last year’s success and for the rest of the young forwards it will be a pivotal season determining who will be a part of success in the future. This should be Casey Mittelstadt’s last year to really prove if he can cut it in the NHL before moving on, while Peyton Krebs and Dylan Cozens will show whether or not they have the potential to be offensive standouts in the league.

With the lack of change, Adams is betting on the future and clearly owners Terry and Kim Pegula are finally on board with the vision of their general manager as they’ve finally given one an extension. Since owning the team it has been the best decision they have made.

Aside from the complete different ends of the spectrum of success the Bills and Sabres are on, the biggest difference is how you should run a NFL franchise and a NHL team. In football you should put expectations on your manager to get better in two to three seasons because of how quick it takes for the player talent evaluation to be noticed.

However, in the NHL, rebuilding general managers should get at a minimum three to five seasons to prove they know what they’re doing when it comes to evaluating talent. Adams took over as GM for the 2020 NHL Draft and is now finally going to get to see his first two players in the NHL and three if you add top-pick Power from 2021.

When Brandon Beane took over the Bills in 2017, all six of the players Buffalo drafted played a full season immediately the following year — which is the expectation for NFL draft picks.

It won’t be known whether or not Adams’ first two drafts were horrible for another four years, while the Bills immediately knew Beane was doing the right thing because of the nature of the NFL. So the commitment to the future Adams is building is the best thing going for the Sabres this season.

Expect this year to be exciting to watch at times, but if your hopes are too high you will end up disappointing yourself. Where your high expectations should be focused are the development of the Sabres youth in and out of the system.