Jeff Skinner Out Week-To-Week With Upper-Body Injury

The Buffalo Sabres have announced that forward Jeff Skinner is out with an upper-body injury on a week-to-week basis.

It was previously understood that Skinner would be undergoing further testing to determine the full extent of his injury, but there was some hope that it’d be classified as at most a day-to-day absence. That has proven not to be the case. Now, the Sabres will have to make do without a player who ranks second in team scoring.

The 31-year-old has had an impressive career renaissance under head coach Don Granato, going from healthy scratches and just 14 points of production under former coach Ralph Krueger in 2020-21 to a career-high 82 points in 2022-23.

Owner of a $9MM AAV contract, Skinner has become one of the Sabres’ most important offensive generators. Losing Skinner on a week-to-week basis could be a potentially fatal blow to Buffalo’s long-shot playoff hopes. MoneyPuck currently pegs the Sabres at a 7.9% chance of making the playoffs, which is certainly low but not completely impossible.

Without Skinner, it’ll be even tougher for the Sabres to beat the odds and end the league’s most extensive playoff drought. On a team where key offensive players such as Dylan Cozens, Victor Olofsson, Peyton Krebs have failed to take desired steps forward in terms of production, the points Skinner provides on a consistent basis are invaluable.

Without him occupying his typical first-line left-wing slot, the Sabres could turn to Olofsson in that role. Olofsson has previously served as a healthy scratch, but did score 28 goals last season. The Sabres could also opt to elevate their leading scorer Casey Mittelstadt to Skinner’s role, thereby helping replace some of the playmaking Skinner provides, though it would potentially come at the cost of de-stabilizing the Sabres’ third line, leaving Zach Benson and Jordan Greenway in limbo.

Whichever route the Sabres choose to go down in terms of replacing Skinner in the immediate term, one thing is clear: this is a different team without the 2011 Calder Trophy winner, and a team that will find itself even harder-pressed to generate offense.