Thompson takes flight at centre for Sabres

One of the most fascinating parts of NHL coaching and player development is the effort made to maximize a player’s skill set. It’s as nebulous and complex a topic as any, but critically important for franchises in their quest to build a contender.

You could explore this topic a thousand ways over, but one of the most intriguing storylines you can find in the league concerns Tage Thompson and the Buffalo Sabres.

Thompson, a hulking 6-foot-6 winger acquired from the St. Louis Blues in the summer of 2018 in the mega Ryan O’Reilly deal, was an interesting acquisition piece for the Sabres, who were infatuated with his combination of size and skill. But for years, Thompson was looking like another chapter in the same book – an NHL team perpetually chases a physical specimen who, for a variety of reasons, is ineffective. Thompson was never bad, but he was unproductive enough for us to lower our expectations.

Enter Don Granato, who permanently moved Thompson from the wing to centre at the start of the 2020-21 season. We see positional moves – though usually it goes inside-out – all the time at the NHL level, but this change played out very differently. Thompson is emerging as a top-six centre.

There have been several contributing factors, not the least of which includes a surge of young talent on the Sabres roster over the past two seasons, but Thompson’s production has absolutely exploded. This season, he’s already amassed 12 points (six goals, six assists) in nine games, picking up right where he left off in 2021-22 (38 goals and 68 points in 78 games).

To show how sharp his progression has been at centre, consider his rate scoring year-over-year. The past two seasons have seen him in the middle of the ice, regularly deployed with productive wingers Jeff Skinner and Alex Tuch. The change has been remarkable:

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From 2017-20, Thompson was a fourth-percentile scorer – or said differently, nearly every regular forward in the league was outproducing Thompson on the offensive end. From 2021-22, when Thompson has been exclusively at centre, he’s 25th league-wide (93rd percentile) in rate scoring at even strength. Thompson went from one of the league’s least effective scorers, to one of the league’s most effective, in a blink.

You can attribute some of the scoring outburst to a very high shooting percentage that Thompson is carrying over the last season and change. Converting on more than 11 per cent of even-strength shots is difficult for the most talented snipers in the world long-term, so Thompson is probably due for a bit of a scoring slump.

But Thompson, scoring or not, has just become a more effective offensive player – so effective that any sort of shooting slump is going to be mitigated some because of his line’s ability to press the play.

Consider expected goal rates for, which measure shot volume adjusted for the quality of those shots. Elite players generally grade well here – scoring can be fleeting from game to game, but territorial dominance is less so, and most high-end offensive players tend to be that way because they have so much opportunity over a given season.

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We have seen rapid changes in performance from NHL players in the past. Perhaps my favourite example of this in recent history can be found in Vegas, where Chandler Stephenson – famously acquired for a fifth-round pick – instantly transitioned from fourth-line role player to top-six weapon.

In Stephenson’s case, the speed element of his game became a critically important complementary piece further up the Vegas lineup. There, the Golden Knights put gamebreaker Jack Eichel and elite two-way attacker Mark Stone on Stephenson’s line – Eichel and Stone benefiting from Stephenson’s frenetic pace of play and speed on the outside, Stephenson benefiting from a serious surge in playing talent around him. Voila, offensive explosion.

Stephenson’s story may be a bit more about fit and linemate quality than Thompson’s, but the concluding point is the same. The element of scouting is never going away, and the coaches who find value where others can’t rise to the top.

All of this is to say that Thompson’s story is far from over. The team may have found something additive offensively, perhaps significantly so. But the Sabres as a team have yet to realize any real success, and there are other areas of the game – say, defensively – where he and his linemates are still too forgiving.

But Thompson serves as an important reminder that there are no two alike career arcs when it comes to player development. There are trends, and there are likelihoods and probabilities, and there is meaningful research that helps us assess risk and implement future decisions.

All it takes is one Tage Thompson, or one Don Granato, to change the narrative.