from Matthew Fairburn of The Athletic,

When the Buffalo Sabres were entering the offseason, general manager Kevyn Adams was unwavering in what he had seen from goalie Devon Levi. Levi won five of the seven games he played for the Sabres after the conclusion of his college career at Northeastern and he allowed three goals or fewer in five of those seven games, too.

While the traditional path for a goalie is to spend time in the AHL before jumping to the NHL, those seven games, along with Levi’s body of work in college, convinced the Sabres he could be different. At just 21 years old, he was going to get a chance to take the net for a team with playoff aspirations. He would play behind a work-in-progress defense and share the crease with two other unproven goalies, Eric Comrie and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen.

“I want our players to be fearless and that’s how we’re going to run the organization, too,” Adams said in April. “Donny and myself, we are going to be fearless and we’re going to trust and believe in our players. When we think they’re ready and in spots to succeed we’re going to help them. For me looking at Devon, I see a special person, I see a special work ethic, a special talent”

Few players have done what Levi is attempting. Goalies who have skipped the AHL typically come from other professional leagues like the KHL in Russia (Sergei Bobrovsky) or SEL in Sweden (Henrik Lundqvist). Carter Hart, Jeremy Swayman and Spencer Knight are recent examples of goalies who ended up with fewer than 20 AHL games. But Hart and Knight have experienced some ups and downs the last few years. Knight is in the AHL after entering the player assistance program to deal with his OCD. Swayman played nine AHL games before getting called up to work in tandem with a formidable veteran in Tuukka Rask while playing behind one of the NHL’s most consistent defensive teams in Boston. The next season, he was splitting the net with Linus Ullmark, another veteran who signed a lucrative free agent deal.

Levi, meanwhile, doesn’t share the net with a proven veteran goalie and the Sabres allowed the fifth-most high-danger chances in the NHL last season.

continued ($)