Sabres have serious summer ahead
NHL
by MATT KRUEGER Reporter

Sabres center Jochen Hecht packs up his gear during locker clean-out Monday at HSBC Arena. Photo by Patrick McPartland

Ryan Miller stood in the opening of a crescent of media members Monday, answering questions about disappointments, a new contract, management decisions and a slew of other topics during the Buffalo Sabres' locker clean-out day.

The ultra-thin Miller, who's listed in the media guide as 6-foot-2, 166 pounds, looked even more waifish than usual, probably a symptom of his fatigue from starting 76 games this season. And his biggest concern at that moment was to take a break from hockey and clear his mind from a disappointing season.

"What I'm going to try to do for myself is try to be in really good shape, try to get a mental break, try to come back hungry," Miller said two days after the Sabres closed out the regular season with a 39-31-12 record, just missing the playoffs by four points. "If you want to just talk about me, I think a lot of my game, I had some moments when I lacked focus. Part of it was fatigue and learning how to manage that. I don't want to use that as an excuse. I need to learn how to manage that. I think I failed in some situations. I was bad in some situations. But overall, I battled, I competed, I came to the rink, I played. So looking at me, I want to get a break, mentally. Just take a break."

Miller certainly earned some time off, after playing a club-record 4,474 minutes this season. But as he sits around his Michigan home this summer, he'll still be thinking about how the Sabres can pull a turnaround as big as the fall it took from winning the Presidents' Trophy in 2007 to out of the playoffs in 2008.

"From a team that's had a lot of success to a team that misses the playoffs, we're embarrassed," Miller said. "But this serves as good motivation. I'm not going to sit here and pout and tell you guys that we could have done things differently. That's pretty obvious. The last few years, we could have done things differently. We didn't win the Cup. We need to change and adapt. This year, it came down to attention to details in key moments, and we didn't have it. Next year, everyone in this room has to be hungry and out to prove something and looking to get back on track."

And that's exactly the challenge for everyone on the roster this summer. Each player has to find a way to improve his game, the team's game and find a way to win more games.

"This isn't something I want to experience again," said Paul Gaustad, who has only found success in Buffalo with back-to-back trips to the Eastern Conference finals the past two years. "I'm going to try to learn from my game and create as much as I can to help out the team to not get in this situation again."

"I think it's every guy in here taking a look at themselves and trying to figure out what they can do get a little bit better. Little things add up. When you miss the playoffs by a couple points, you add little things together. If you get a couple more points, you make the playoffs."

Changes are sure to come for the Sabres, since eight players head to free agency this summer and 10 more are slated to become free agents after next year.

The smart money says Dmitri Kalinin and Jocelyn Thibault won't be back next year, while questions surround guys like Teppo Numminen, Steve Bernier and Nolan Pratt. Gaustad has been earmarked as a must-sign priority for the Sabres along with Ryan Miller and Jason Pominville, who both become free agents in 2009.

But those are decisions for managing partner Larry Quinn and general manager Darcy Regier. For the players, the onus is still on finding that missing piece to the puzzle the team needed to get to the playoffs this year.

"For us, it's been a disappointing year," Pominville said. "I think the most disappointing thing about this whole thing is that we feel, I feel, and the guys feel that we're capable of winning. That's the disappointing part. You look back at the season, and we're out of the playoffs. We have a good enough team to be in the playoffs, and we weren't able to set our goals. On the other hand, hopefully, we can learn from this thing. Making the playoffs isn't something you get every year. You have to earn it. In the big picture, we didn't earn it this year."

Buffalo's 12 overtime losses, tied for second most in the league, certainly leaves a bitter taste for the players, as do the nine shootout losses. Better performances in overtime could have landed the Sabres in the playoffs.

Buffalo also has to look at its special teams play, which improved over last year but still finished in the middle of the league. Buffalo's power play converted on 18 percent of its chances this year, while the penalty kill was effective 83.2 percent of the time.

"We just have to learn from this year be more consistent," said center Jochen Hecht. "For a good part of the year, our power play was good, our penalty kill was good, better than last year. At the end of the year, we dropped off there. We've just got to stay consistent the whole year and learn to finish off those games when we have a lead."