While COVID-related absences have slowed down significantly since last season and earlier this season, they are not totally a thing of the past just yet. The Buffalo Sabres have announced that defenseman Colin Miller has been placed in the NHL’s COVID-19 Protocol, and will be out for the foreseeable future. The Sabres are set to take on the New York Rangers tonight, so Miller will obviously be unable to play in that game as the Sabres might have originally planned.
This loss will not likely be anything of major concern for the Sabres, who are 6th in the Atlantic Division with a 23-33-9 record. The remaining games of their season have pride at stake more than anything else, so losing Miller to the COVID protocol is unlikely to make anyone in the Sabres organization lose any sleep. As Mike Harrington of The Buffalo News reports, Miller’s normal defense partner Mark Pysyk will also not suit up for tonight’s game versus the Rangers, and in his (and Miller’s) place, Casey Fitzgerald and Will Butcher will re-enter the lineup. In a media availability, Sabres coach Don Granato stated that he wanted Butcher and Fitzgerald to play as a pair because they had been “skating together all week,” so the loss of Miller to COVID protocol may have the unintended consequence of making it easier for Granato to slide that pairing into his lineup.
For Miller, this absence is not likely one he welcomes but also not one that looks to be any major setback to his career, similar to the COVID absences of many other players this season. Miller has had an improved season this year compared to last, although he has struggled to stay in the lineup with any great degree of consistency. He has 14 points in 36 games this season, an improvement on his 12 points in 48 games last season. For Miller, who is a pending unrestricted free agent as his $3.875MM AAV contract is expiring, the hope has to be that he misses only a few days thanks to this development.