Shutdown Pair

Author: TheTick

  • Gameday 2011-2012 – Canadiens at Sabres

    We all know what’s at stake for the Buffalo Sabres right now.  Every point is important, being 2 back of Washington (also playing tonight).  The improbable run Buffalo’s on (slightly more improbable than last year) is coming to a close, with only 8 more games left after tonight.  The Sabres have gotten a lot of help – the other contenders for the 8th spot have been doing a LOT of losing, so that even when Buffalo only picked up 1 point in a few games recently, it didn’t hurt.  They weathered Tyler Myers being out, and get him back tonight.

    So why isn’t there more buzz about this team?  Well, for me, I’m just enjoying the ride.  Trying not to get too wound up in case they falter.  Even if they make the playoffs, there are some juggernauts they might end up facing (Penguins look deadly right now).  Much like Gerbe’s second-half last year, I’ve loved watching Tyler Ennis develop.  I want to see more of this rough and tumble Tyler Myers.  I’m very much enjoying the success of the young guns on their call-ups, with Foligno in particular showing why we were okay with trading away Zack Kassian.

    I might just get to watch tonight, and while I’m not jumping-up-and-down excited like some people seem to be expecting, I’m happy.  Take it or leave it.

  • Crowd Comments

    I went to the Sabres/Canadiens game on Monday, and I thought I’d comment about the issue everyone is talking about (while they distract themselves from a stressful playoff run).  I had zero problems with the crowd or the noise they made.  Did it get quiet during play?  Yeah, but *I* get quiet during play – I’m watching!  I know I made a joke about it, but it’s true.  Let me turn this around:  those of you who think we should make noise the whole game, what exactly are we doing?  Random cheering?  Constantly trying to chant (even if no one is joining in)?  I’m serious, what do you want to hear?  I thought we were plenty loud at the right times.

    The other aspect of it was whether or not we were cheering Gomez’s injury.  I saw Myers hit him, and it didn’t look like a clean hit to me from the start, though the size difference can make that hard to judge at full speed.  I’m not surprised he got dinged though three games is a bit much for a non-repeat offender to me.  The Sabres have a history with Scott Gomez (the Miller injury – and another ‘lack of response’, painful memory there) so it’s not surprising that fans would be less than sympathetic with him being injured, but it’s not like it was being greatly cheered or anything.  Montreal media needs to remember that a few bad apples on Twitter don’t make a fanbase.  Just like a few Habs fans who flip over and burn cop cars after a playoff win don’t make up theirs.

    We have to hope at this point that the Sabres can rally without Myers (who has been more and more productive lately, including the game-winner against the Habs) and keep rattling off wins to try and get ahead of Washington or Florida.  Sekera is still out, and Sulzer has been playing well in his stead, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Brayden McNabb is back in.  See you at 7:30pm for Colorado.

  • SHHHH! I’m Watching the Game!

    Hey, you guys.  Yes, you, with the sign and the face paint.  Keep it down tomorrow night, my son and I are attending a hockey game, and I want to watch what happens.  Feel the wrath of my disapproving stare when you yell “SHOOOOOOT” seven seconds into a power play.  Quiver in your seats as I berate you (on Twitter, of course) for your random “WOOOOOO” when you got your twelfth beer, or an awesome nacho platter, or whatever the hell it was for.  Don’t even THINK of standing up if there’s a breakaway.  By the way, it’s “Let’s Go Buff-a-lo”, not “Let’s Go Sabres”, so don’t let me hear you say that, even if it’s your six year old who really wants to start a chant who starts it.  Boo ONLY the players on the approved villains list for the opponent at each game.  Don’t laugh at the Kiss Cam or the crotch-shot videos, that will only encourage them to keep showing them.  A round of polite applause is required when a correct call is made by the on-ice officials against an opposing player.

    Or, just go the game and do whatever makes you happy.  It IS a game, after all.  Everybody else can jump in a fucking lake if they don’t like it.  Conveniently, there’s one right outside the FNC.

  • The Beginning, Not The End

    This is, frankly, amazing to me.  I AGAIN wrote this team off completely, still cheering for them, but kind of hoping they’d get an awesome draft pick and clean house.  They made some solid deadline moves, pulling in a great player for the future, getting another 1st round pick, and so on.  How could I know that Ryan Miller would start throwing down shutouts left and right?  That Ville Leino and Brad Boyes would light up the scoresheet in the one game where he didn’t?  And these are not bad teams being beaten either, with Boston, Vancouver and San Jose all falling to Buffalo recently.  A healthy defense, secondary scoring to pick up the team when Vanek and Pominville are scuffling…this is what we thought we had all along.  You all know by now that the Sabres can get at least a share of 8th place tonight, by beating Winnipeg in regulation.  It may not last, but even so – they matter in this race now.  What had been simply ‘not mathematically eliminated’ is now something much more possible.  It’s quite a ride, and I’m glad I get to see them in person (as a fan, not with my ‘Serious Blogger Face’ on) against Montreal next week.  Buckle up.

  • Sabres at Ducks and Derek Roy

    A west coast swing with late start times, just when we get a new toy to play with??  UGH.  I can’t wait to see how Cody Hodgson does tonight, even if I might fall asleep by the third period.  The first game with a new player is always fun, even if it sometimes goes downhill after that (*cough*Bernier*cough).  Hodgson will start out on a line with Ennis and Stafford, but we’ll see how that goes as the game wears on.

    On the Miller comments.  Sounds like a guy tired of being asked about personnel decisions he has no say in.  Mountain out of a molehill, indeed.  Kind of wish Miller was Russian so he could only give quotes when a Russian reporter rolls through town.

    Speaking of the Buffalo News…I read a comment there again.  STUPID.  It’s this:

    I have been silent for awhile. I can’t believe I am reading the comments by Lindy. He stated Roy will now be his last minute center. Roy is the WORST defensive center in the league.

    *facepalm*  I know there are those of you not happy that Roy is still here, but let’s see if this is actually true.  Of players that Behind the Net registers as centers, with more than 40 games played, Roy is 36th as far as Quality of Competition (Sami Pahlsson, another C coveted at the deadline, is right below him).  That’s out of 148, by the way.  He’s not getting nutty zone starts either, with offensive zone starts about 51% of the time.  That’s on par with Henrik Zetterberg and Brad Richards.  To contrast, Henrik Sedin starts in the offensive zone a staggering 77.5% of the time!  It’s obvious that Buffalo doesn’t ‘optimize’ zone starts the way some teams do.   Looking pretty good for Roy, whose stats are colored by his low offensive output this year (possibly still recovering from his injury early).

    As I look at the stats, it’s clear that Roy has grown into being at least a solid defensive player, middle of the road to a bit better in most areas.  You may not like him as a person, or just think ‘he sucks’, but it’s really not true.

  • Feeling Relevant

    These were my thoughts as the NHL Trade Deadline coverage got rolling this morning.  Gaustad and Roy had both been involved in the rumors, so no huge surprise when that broke.  The return was surprising, even with the 4th rounder going the other way, but still, we knew he was the sort of guy playoff teams love to add at the deadline.  You know, that intangible-laden 3rd-liner, to win face-offs and ‘battles’ and all that other stuff pundits like to say.  When the official deadline was passing, though, people were disappointed.  “That’s it?” you heard.  Then you started to hear “Vancouver has another deal yet to come”, and then “They’re getting Kassian”.  We all sat up and took notice, and then when we heard Cody Hodgson was the guy coming back…wow.  That’s a great return, giving up Kassian and Gragnani, and getting Hodgson and Alexander Sulzer.  I love these deals.

    As I was thinking about these since they went down, I decided this is basically a win-win-win for the teams involved.  Buffalo is a win both for now – Hodgson has more offensive upside than Goose, and is a lot younger – and in the future, getting Nashville’s first rounder next year in addition to the players from Vancouver.  Nashville gets the vet C that teams love for the playoffs, and Vancouver gets a couple of guys that might fit better on their team than ours.  Kassian needs to prove himself in the NHL, and Gragnani might work best for the Canucks where he can just be a power play QB and get the softest minutes otherwise.

    I’m genuinely interested in seeing what Hodgson can do for Buffalo.  I’m sorry to see Gaustad go, as I had hopes for him…but it was pretty obvious that what he is now, is all he’ll ever be.  And if you turn Goose and a 4th into a 1st, you do it.  Gragnani was expendable…McNabb, and soon, other D-men in Rochester were pushing him from below, but he couldn’t move up any higher than 7th on the depth chart when everyone is healthy.  And all of this happened without crippling the Sabres’ cap situation any more than it already is.  Good job, Darcy.  Is it Wednesday yet?

  • Buffalo Sabres Official App

    For the longest time, I used SportsTap to get scoring updates on Bills and Sabres games on my Android phone.  At some point, though, the Sabres games stopped working completely.  I could still view the score, but it wouldn’t alert.  Removed completely, reinstalled, no change.  I switched to Yahoo’s Sportacular, an oddly named and somewhat ugly app that nevertheless worked quite well for updates.  However, the Sabres released their own official app yesterday, so I gave it a whirl with the Yahoo app still installed to easily compare and contrast.

    Pros for the Sabres Official App:

    • Integrates video, media and news from Sabres.com
    • Scoring alerts include details like who got the goal/assists
    • Alerts came just before or simultaneously with the Yahoo! app
    • Many helpful extras, such as a map of FNC, a map of parking options around FNC, and special promotions for tickets or at the Sabres store

    Pros for Yahoo! Sportacular:

    • Yahoo! blog integration (Puck Daddy)
    • Other sports available

    I found myself uninstalling Sportacular in pretty short order.  If I was a big fan of another sp0rt, I might want to stick with the Yahoo! app, but I don’t need the Bills score that badly, and they only overlap part of the Sabres season anyway.  I hope future releases can pretty up the Sabres app a bit, and possibly make some of the menu choices bigger or easier to click on for those of us on phones with a smaller screen, but I was very happy with the experience using it last night.

  • Gameday 2011-2012 – Stars at Sabres

    It’s a game night tonight, and a good time to get back in the bloggin’ swing.  There’s actual positive stuff that’s happened, and I got to see some of it.  Even though I had to put up with NBC Sports Network and their love of the Bruins.  The Stars come to town tonight, and my favorite stat of the say (from Mike Heika I believe) is that Dallas is 0-8-1 on the back end of a back to back set of games, of which this is one.  Pretty good odds Buffalo extends their home winning ways.  Thomas Vanek should be back, with Luke Adam the most likely to sit.  I agree with the Twitter consensus that if he’s not going to play, let him get his minutes with the Amerks.  Get straight, and come back when the next inevitable injury occurs.

    7:30pm tonight.  I’ll be radio only.

  • Beatings Literal and Figurative

    The Buffalo Sabres beat the Boston Bruins.  Badly.  They tried two goalies, both of who allowed 3 goals.  The Bruins took a bunch of stupid penalties.  When they couldn’t solve Ryan Miller, they tried to get dirty.  That didn’t work, either.  Buffalo stood in and took the physical pounding, and won the game.  My positives:

    Ville Leino.  What a game he had last night.  He’s a puck possession beast, and we might finally be seeing what we hoped to see from him.  Great fun watching him right now.

    Patrick Kaleta.  That was about as close to a perfect Kaleta game as we’ve seen in a long time.  Scored, fought (well, mostly held on for dear life), and was a prime agitator.  Bruins were after him all night, including Chara trying to elbow him in the head.  This is what we expect when he’s in the lineup.

    Ryan Miller.  His stellar goaltending performance could almost get lost in the shuffle, with all of the other stuff going on.  But we won’t let it, because it was awesome.  It seemed like there were long stretches where he wasn’t challenged, but he made 36 saves anyway.

    Tyler Ennis.  The only guy above 50% at the faceoff dot (other than Luke Adam’s single faceoff win), he had a goal and an assist to boot.

    Negatives:

    The officiating.  I think that the Boston goal probably should’ve counted, that was a reputation call based on the previous games in this series.  I’m glad it didn’t count, though.  The refs also didn’t seem to have a good feel for the rough stuff and how to control it.

    NBC Sports Network.  I love Doc Emrick, so I don’t think it’s his fault, but it seemed as if the broadcast and studio show were ready with all sorts of stats and facts and video to show how awesome the Bruins are…and had no idea what to do when the Sabres dominated them.  Milbury was an idiot again (no surprise), and as mentioned on Twitter last night, I find it really funny that someone who once beat a fan with a shoe would think that someone fighting on the ice with a visor on is some terrible person.

    What’s next:

    Buffalo currently sits 9 points back of Ottawa for the eighth and final playoff spot in the East, but they have to leapfrog a few other teams to get there.  The Senators have lost seven straight, though, so a run by the Sabres now might just get them back into contention.  Still, I think the focus should be on getting past the Islanders (who they are tied with) and Winnipeg (4 points up).  Then we’ll talk about 8th place.

  • Hitting the reset button

    I’ve been quiet for a while, and for good reason.  Beyond hitting FNC for one of the viewing parties, an NBCSN game, and a grainy feed here and there, I haven’t seen the Sabres much at all in the past few weeks.  I don’t feel right commenting on the play of the team or individual players when my sample size is this small.  But I’m still a fan, and I follow what I can.  I’m using this break to wipe the slate clean, as it were.  No bad feelings from stupid losing streaks.  I want the team to make the playoffs, as they seem to think they still can, and if not, making some deals to be better next year is A-OK by me, too.  I don’t think this team is really this bad, but there’s been injuries (with particularly poor timing), lack of chemistry and good players having bad years.  I don’t see any reason to go nuclear.  Move who you can, get who you can fit under the cap, and let’s go.