University of Michigan defenseman Owen Power smiles during practice in Ann Arbor, Mich., Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021.

 Associated Press

TAMPA, Fla. – Owen Power is signed and sealed. He's getting delivered to Sabres morning skate here Sunday and to practice Monday in Toronto. He's expected to make his long-awaited debut Tuesday night against the Leafs in Scotiabank Arena.

The pride of Michigan via Mississauga, Ont., is going to have a chance to play eight games this season, a veritable hockey lab for the Buffalo coaches to assimilate the No. 1 overall pick into NHL life on and off the ice and give him a huge head start on the 2022-23 campaign. What should they be trying to accomplish in these three weeks? Here are five Power plays to keep an eye on:

1). Assess his mental state. Michigan's overtime loss to Denver in the Frozen Four semifinals was a stunner. The Wolverines were college hockey's version of a Dream Team, with four of the top five picks in last year's NHL Draft, but the one-and-done format bit them at crunch time. Power has had a whirlwind 11 months, from the breakout performance at last year's World Championships to all the pressure and attention in college, to the Covid-truncated World Juniors in Edmonton and the Olympics in Beijing. Now you add the NHL debut to a startling season no player had experienced until this year.

The Sabres know Power is a quick study and, frankly, he could have been in the NHL all season if he had chosen that route. Now they have to make sure he can lift his game to another level of play with more eyes on him than he's ever had.

"There's a lot to manage, and there's a lot going on," General Manager Kevyn Adams said on a video call Friday. "So we want to insulate him well in the locker room and we want to set him up for success. And then we just want to let him go play and have fun. That's why I really believe that this stretch of games till the end of the season is so critical for him because you feel the NHL game, you get a good understanding of what you need to do to prepare yourself to play. Either the speed or the physicality, all of it. He'll take that into his offseason and just the way he's wired is the type of player who processes things very quickly."

2). Feel the system. When you're as talented as Power is, you can adjust to anything thrown your way. He's going to have to be a fast study, both because he has to quickly feel comfortable in coach Don Granato's five-man attack scheme and because his first two opponents are Toronto and St. Louis. That's going to be a shade different than opening against, say, Seattle and Arizona.

"We do want to experiment. We've we've kind of felt that way with our team and all our young guys," Granato said. "When we move Peyton Krebs to wing and Dylan Cozens to wing and back to center, we're thinking, 'OK, what does this hold for the future for us as we watch these guys evolve their game and develop so early in their career?' And Owen's another one. ... He has a pretty darn good foundation.  It's allowing him to acclimate to the NHL, to the size, strength, speed, intelligence, awareness of the opponents, all these intangibles."

Power is likely to start with Mark Pysyk or Colin Miller as a partner. It will be interesting to see how things go with Pysyk, a veteran the Sabres have some interest in bringing back next season. 

"When you when you add it all up, it was a great development year for him," Adams said. "Because regardless of how young or how talented he is, he's still a young player, and we want to keep helping him get better and better and set him up for success. So really proud of how he handled himself during this season on and off the ice, and just excited to get him in a Sabres uniform."

3). Can he play the right side? For now at least, the Sabres seem to have their top two options at left defense in Rasmus Dahlin and Mattias Samuelsson. Now you add Power to the left side. All three of those players project to be 20-plus minutes a game guys and the Sabres really don't want to saddle Power or Samuelsson to a third pair.

It might make the most sense for Power to go right so he can lock into a top-pair role, and he asked coaches at Michigan to play him from time to time on his off side this season. That was partly to increase his versatility and clearly seemed to be with an eye on the Buffalo depth chart.

"I've watched him play a few times this year where he was getting reps on the right side and one game he played almost every shift over there," said Adams. "That is something that we want to talk about. But the nice part about that is, as you've seen with our team, Jacob Bryson's played the right side quite a bit as of late. Rasmus Dahlin his played a lot on the right previously, before his NHL career, so it doesn't necessarily have to be Owen that slide over there. But it's something we'll look to do. From my vantage point, I want to be able to see a little bit of how combinations could look just to help us as we head into the offseason."

4). Build the Leafs hate: Power's debut would be a big deal if it was a Tuesday night in New Jersey. But he better be in eyes-wide-open mode because Tuesday's game figures to be quite a grudge match. Buffalo rolled the Leafs twice in 11 days last month, including the Heritage Classic win that was punctuated by Auston Matthews' cross-check to the neck of Dahlin that landed him a two-game suspension, Dylan Cozens' subsequent open-ice hit on Matthews and Michael Bunting's attempted assault on Cozens. The Leafs figure to be pretty fed up with the Sabres come Tuesday and the Sabres love the fact they're under the skin of their chief rivals.

Growing up in Leafs territory but attending Sabres games as a kid, Power should know all about the rivalry from the Buffalo side. So being thrust into this game should make Power's debut even more memorable because it has the chance to be one of the feistiest Sabres-Leafs games in a long time. Hey, no better moment than the first time to learn up close what this is all about. Call it Michigan-Michigan State multiplied a few times out. Instead of being grossed by Spartans green like he was in college, Power can instantly recoil at the sight of blue.

5). Deal with the media: Power is going to be in demand, and this isn't college. At Michigan, things were tightly controlled and there were multiple top NHL picks to spread the media work around. And things got absurd at the Frozen Four, when the NHL's No. 1 overall pick never spoke to reporters as Michigan chose to put seniors on the podium. (Aside: The NCAA needs to read the room. Just a little. It's your event. Step in). Gotta love when schools "protect" the student-athletes, when the real education would come in interacting with the media. Especially in times of adversity.

Power is likely to do more media work with more people in the next three days than in quite a while at Michigan. Although he's not playing Sunday in Amalie Arena, he's expected to skate and talk Sunday morning. And again Monday after practice in Toronto. And perhaps after both the morning skate and game Tuesday in Toronto. A lot of questions and a lot of reporters in the Center of the Hockey Universe. Get used to it, kid. It's how things roll for No. 1 overall picks.

Some words on RJ Night

Props to the Sabres for the work it took to get the Rick Jeanneret tribute together. Props to Sabres fans everywhere for filling the building and giving the legend the tribute he deserved. All of us who were there lived a night we will never forget.

Where was Pat LaFontaine? Two sources close to the team confirmed the long-deposed team president was in the building but stayed out of sight and did not join his fellow alums on the ice so as not to distract from Jeanneret's ceremony and draw the attention of the media. 

LaFontaine got big cheers when his video tribute appeared on the Jumbotron. He did attend Jeanneret's alumni luncheon the next day at Chef's restaurant and did an autograph signing at Dave & Adam's Card World in Clarence.

Said Jeanneret on the luncheon during last Sunday's broadcast vs. Florida: "It was absolutely an awesome afternoon. There's a lot of things we can't talk about but I can tell you I laughed solid for three hours. That was a long lunch."

Where was Dominik Hasek's video? The Sabres reportedly did not get one from the Dominator in time to be played for fans. They gave Jeanneret a collection of all the videos, far more than what could be aired during the game. It's possible more tribute videos will be shown in the building as the month goes on and Jeanneret spends his final games at the mic.

Homecoming at the mic

Tuesday's Sabres-Hurricanes game had big meaning in the visiting broadcast booth. That's because Carolina play-by-play man Mike Maniscalco, a 1997 Buffalo State grad and former WGR talk show host/producer, called NHL play-by-play for the first time in his hometown.

"That was surreal. Something I never thought would happen," Maniscalco said when this corner said hello Thursday in PNC Arena in Raleigh. He was doing the radio feed instead of his normal TV role because the game was being televised by ESPN Plus.

Maniscalco has been on the air with the Hurricanes since 2016 and is uber-popular in Raleigh, where his nickname among fans and players is "Big Rig." He joined the team as the rinkside reporter, and then took the TV play-by-play reins during the Toronto playoff bubble in 2020. This is his first 82-game schedule.

How did Maniscalco and partner Tripp Tracy show up dressed to KeyBank Center on Tuesday? As he wrote on Twitter: "When you’re radio only & in the house of Rick Jeanneret there is only one dress code to follow: 'turtleneck and blazer'".

Around the boards

• Matthews broke the Leafs franchise record for goals (54 by Rick Vaive) with two Thursday in Dallas, including an overtime winner. He's on pace for 65, which would make him the NHL's first 60-goal man since Steven Stamkos in 2012. While most of the Buffalo attention will be on Power, it will be interesting to see how engaged Matthews is when the Sabres come to town Tuesday night. He's overdue to have an outburst against Buffalo, as he has just one goal and one assist with a minus-3 rating in the three games between the teams this season.

Between Matthews, the Edmonton duo of Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid, Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin, and forwards Jonathan Huberdeau of Florida and Johnny Gaudreau of Calgary, this is going to be one fascinating Hart Trophy ballot.

• When his team beat the Sabres Thursday night, Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour became the third active individual and 13th in NHL history to be part of a 100-point season with a franchise as both a a player and a coach.

The others were Chicago's Darryl Sutter and Lindy Ruff, with the Sabres. Buffalo had 110 points when Ruff was in his rookie season of 1979-80 as a player and three 100-plus points season when he was the coach from 2006-2010).

• After the Sabres, the NHL team with the next-longest playoff drought is Detroit. The Red Wings will be out of the playoffs for the sixth year in a row – after appearing for 25 straight seasons from 1991-2016. As far as droughts between victories in a postseason series, the Sabres are third at 15 (since their second-round win over the Rangers in 2007).

Florida is the leader, with no wins since the 1996 East final over Pittsburgh. Then comes Toronto, which last won a series in the 2004 opening round against Ottawa. The Panthers and Leafs both look great of late but it remains to be seen how their goaltending will hold up in the postseason. Racehorse hockey won't get it done.

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