Last season was a major disappointment for the Buffalo Sabres, who failed to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2011. Many players underwhelmed, and, as such, they’ll be tasked with bouncing back come the fall. The spotlight will be fixed on a few names, but perhaps none more than Dylan Cozens.
Entering his fourth full NHL season and fifth overall, Cozens has become an unquestioned part of the Sabres’ core. Still, his inconsistency has become a concern, and his career so far has been hit-or-miss. Coming off a terrific breakout season the year before, 2023-24 saw a major regression in almost every aspect of his game. With expectations high and patience wearing thin for the Sabres, he has no choice but to turn it around.
Cozens Is Talented
It’s important to remember that Cozens is still very young. This may be his fifth season, but he’s still only 23 years old. The Sabres first called him up a month before his 21st birthday, and he likely wasn’t ready. But he’s done very well despite that.
Thanks to great all-around offensive awareness and diligent backchecking, the seventh overall pick of the 2019 Draft has become one of the Sabres’ best players. Although he’s far from the most imposing presence on the ice, he’s demonstrated that he’s not afraid to stand up for himself or his teammates and has been involved in numerous fights. Fans have gravitated toward him, dubbing him “The Workhorse from Whitehorse“.
Cozens has also experienced far more success than most players his age, already with a 30-goal season to his credit. The Sabres know full well that he’s only scratching the surface and will be capable of much more as he matures, but therein, unfortunately, lies the issue. The Yukon native has shown considerable promise but hasn’t been able to maintain any consistency on a year-to-year basis.
His four seasons in Buffalo have been up and down. He performed very well in his 41-game rookie campaign despite the obstacles of the COVID pandemic and was one of the few positives in an otherwise disastrous run for the Sabres. He followed it up with a sophomore campaign that saw him score 11 goals in the first half, only to stumble and score just twice after that.
It was a tough go for the center, but he couldn’t have bounced back in a bigger way, breaking out with 31 goals and 68 points in 2022-23 to help the Sabres come within a single point of the playoffs. It seemed that Cozens had officially announced his arrival, and his team rewarded his quantum leap with a seven-year, $49.7 million contract extension signed in February 2023.
2023-24 Was a Colossal Disappointment
Heading into the 2023-24 season, everyone was optimistic. After coming so close, fans and the media were sure that this was the end of the Sabres’ dreaded playoff drought, and the team set out to do just that. Cozens, meanwhile, aimed to continue his skyrocketing momentum and further establish himself amongst the NHL’s elite defensive forwards. None of those things happened.
The season was a failure for the Sabres, who took a massive step backwards and finished just two games above .500 and seven points out of the playoffs. Head coach Don Granato proved incapable of fixing the team’s many problems and was relieved of his duties the day after the season ended, making it the seventh coaching change of the Pegula era.
Unfortunately, no player personified that regression more than Cozens. His production dropped to 18 goals and 47 points, and while that’s not terrible, it was a far cry from what was expected, and that wasn’t even the most disappointing part.
Cozens had set himself apart early on with his intelligence and attention to detail not often seen in such a young player. Last season, the poised two-way force had been replaced by someone who looked like a deer in the headlights. It was the little things, such as skating the puck to the corners to draw in defenders and open up the middle, that made such a big impact, and without them, his play became sloppy and unmotivated. It was the first time in his career that he resembled a player his age.
In Cozens’ defense, he was hardly the only Sabre to turn in a lacklustre campaign, but he stood out the most. Nobody knows the reason for Buffalo’s shocking regression, but the most heavily theorized reason was that Granato attempted to steer the team in a more defensively responsible direction. The gambit did not work, and it took the bite out of the team’s offense (their biggest asset) and made them easy for opponents to manhandle, something Cozens was very candid about after an embarrassing loss to the Carolina Hurricanes in December.
“We’re way too soft this year,” he told Sportsnet.
Returning longtime head coach Lindy Ruff is tasked with solving that problem and making the Sabres tougher and more disciplined; otherwise, these results will continue.
Cozens Must Turn Things Around
All of the Sabres who lost their way last season will have to get themselves back on track if the team wants a realistic chance at success. And after an offseason that saw many key faces depart, role players must step up to fill the void. Cozens will be at the top of that list, and the Sabres need him to rediscover his game for many reasons.
For starters, they have considerably less depth this season after the surprising buyout of Jeff Skinner. Without him, the offense is far less formidable, and the team didn’t do much to replace him. General Manager Kevyn Adams signed a random assortment of midline players, and while they’ll revamp the bottom-six, they won’t solve the scoring issue. In his role as the no. 2 center, Cozens has to be the offensive threat he’s capable of being, or else Buffalo won’t have much of an attack.
The Sabres can also not afford to be so bad defensively. Messy and irresponsible two-way play has been their biggest issue over the last few years, and it came to a head last season. Cozens is too smart and too thorough to struggle as much as he did, and the hope is that he’ll benefit from Ruff’s tutelage. It’s safe to assume he could take on an increased role on the penalty kill with longtime anchor Zemgus Girgensons no longer around, and that could help him shore up his game.
The last reason is financial. With Skinner’s contract no longer on the books, Cozens is now the fourth-highest-paid member of the team at $7.1 million per season. The Sabres’ salary cap situation is tight and will get even tighter with Alex Tuch in the final year of his contract – and management will be looking to extend him. They can’t afford to settle for middling returns from a player who occupies a significant portion of their payroll. To this point, Cozens hasn’t provided much return on their investment, and that has to change.
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Cozens embodies every quality the Sabres need to change their fortunes; he is as valuable to the team as anyone. But he needs to show that he can maintain his high level of play after four start-stop seasons. If not, he may find himself quickly falling out of favor with a fanbase growing increasingly impatient, which could lead the Sabres to consider moving on. Will he find his game this season?
