The Islanders score a late goal to pull within one after giving up an empty-netter, but don’t have enough to beat the Sabres in regulation. Buffalo gets goals from Jack Quinn, Tage Thompson, Peyton Krebs (pictured) and a 198 footer from Bowen Byram into the empty net. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made some dynamite saves, and one of the Islander goals came on a bad angle shot that went in off of Owen Power.
One worrying injury as Sam Carrick left the game after a fight with Anders Lee. Carrick was thrown down to the ice and immediately clutched his arm/shoulder. He was stepping up to get some payback on Lee after the Islander knocked Norris into the boards, but may have paid the price. Hopefully he’s okay, and Buffalo does have the depth if he’s out for a bit.
It wasn’t 100% back to form but I felt like this was a much better game from the Sabres. They were right on the Isles forwards in the defensive zone and were constant pests on the forecheck. They didn’t make a *ton* of mistakes playing the puck, which was the issue during the losses they had recently. Even when it was tied, I never thought they’d lose.
One. Hundred. Points. Hell yeah. Buffalo’s back in action Thursday night in Ottawa taking on the Senators.
So, your favorite team lost. And just after you really got into them (or back in). How rude! It can be hugely frustrating to watch the Sabres make a bunch of mistakes and lose, so how do you put up with it for 80+ games? As someone who in part stepped away from fandom spaces because I couldn’t handle how mad it made me, I have some tips.
Find the good – In even the worst-played game, some fun stuff happens. For example, UPL had some great saves. Maybe the sight of Zach Benson annoying the shit out of some Bruin twice his size makes you chuckle.
Figure out why your coach loves a guy – “Man, why is this guy playing over X?” We’ve all had that thought about some player on our teams. See if you can figure out what Lindy sees in him. Maybe he wants a bigger guy to hit/absorb hits. Or he needs someone he can trust to get out of the zone (heaven knows the Sabres could’ve used better passing last night).
Learn something new – Have you ever really watched line changes? Or faceoffs? What “job” does a certain player have on the power play or the kill? It can be interesting to pay attention to one specific area you don’t often think about.
Years ago, watching a terrible loss or a lackluster effort would’ve driven me mad. I’ve managed to work on that part of myself, and have learned to enjoy the good parts of sports and shake my head and laugh. After all…
Also, if you need a feel-good moment, here’s video of Sabres fans welcoming Rasmus Dahlin’s fiancée back to Buffalo. Carolina Matovac nearly died while on vacation last summer in France, and ended up having to get a heart transplant. She was finally able to return here this week.
ESPN has the full story, but please note that it’s pretty harrowing, and does involve the loss of their unborn child.
Buffalo returns to action tomorrow night against the Detroit Red Wings.
I know, I know. It’s been a minute since a blog with this name existed. How’s your family? A whole heck of a lot has happened around Buffalo sports since I last regularly updated the ol’ sports blog. The Bills are Super Bowl contenders with a generational talent at QB. It’s not all great (we’re still talking about questionable ownership decisions around coaches and GMs) but they are nationally relevant. Ask the version of me writing here back in 2013 whether I thought the Bills would be able to do that (well into a seventeen year playoff drought).
The Buffalo Sabres have gone out of their way to try and match that level of suffering. After firing Lindy Ruff, there was a revolving door of odd choices and coaching retreads (Ted Nolan again, really? Dan Bylsma? Who the fuck is Ralph Krueger?) and somehow they landed back on Lindy. Their playoff drought sits at 14 seasons (18 since they won a round) and the beginning of this season seemed like more of the same. The Sabres were 11-14-4 after a December 8th loss in Calgary, and despite winning a few games at the end of that road trip, the vibes were still bad enough that the GM was canned.
I ended up with tickets to the game (thanks Turkeys for Tickets!) after they got back and went with my daughter. We had an absolute blast and that experience got me paying attention to the Sabres again. Buffalo ended up going on a 10 game win streak, and have only lost back to back games twice in the months since.
That brings us back around to the concept of a bandwagon. Both the Bills and now the Sabres are attracting attention and with that, massive numbers of new and returning fans. There’s an inclination with some people to try and gatekeep, to say “I’ve been here the whole time why haven’t you” but we have to try and push that down. Sports is supposed to be fun, and it’s more fun with more people! Remember parties in the plaza? Packing the building for an open practice? Meeting the team plane at 3am? Why would you want to keep people from that?? Greg Bauch says it well:
Yes. Everyone is welcome. I don't care if the earth tips on its axis from the bandwagon overflow, everyone's welcome. I will haul you up by the cuffs of your jacket to make sure you're safely aboard. If someone makes you feel less than amazing for liking what the Sabres are doing, they're dumb.
We’re about to experience what the Bills and the Bills Mafia experienced back in 2017 – an end to a massive playoff drought. And hopefully like the Bills, the Sabres can carry this forward to many years of relevance. I’d like to end with a line in the post where I talked about bandwagon fans before: “We can’t control the team on the ice or field, or what the media writes, but we are in charge of ourselves. Be happy. Have fun.”
I know, I know, Marco Scandella is the important part of this deal. The Sabres needed to upgrade their defense, and this is a solid step in that direction. BUT don’t discount the positive emotions that seeing Pominville back in town will have.
What a great time to be a fan, right? I happened to go to one of Pommer’s first games in that magical 2005-2006 season, and ended up waiting in line behind Jason’s mom. She had a huge bundle of Pominville sweaters, and she asked the cashier something like “the player’s family gets a discount, right?”. It was fun being there at the beginning of it all.
So yeah, he may no longer be a 30 goal guy, but for a little while, Buffalo sports fans were thinking about something cool. I’m all for it.
Thinking about Leafs/Sabres tonight, I decided to check on some statistics at random. Here are the results. This first section is for 5v5:
Nicolas Deslauriers is the worst CF% player in the NHL who has played more than 20 games. Shawn Thornton is the only player worse than him who is at all close in time on ice.
Ryan O’Reilly is the best Sabre for CF% at 53.68%, which is 88th for players who have played more than 20 games. That may not sound great, but that’s right were Evgeni Malkin is. Main difference is Malkin has a few teammates (some guy named Crosby for one) a bit higher up the list.
Johan Larsson and Brian Gionta start in the D zone the most (both over 40%), while Jack Eichel leads the way for Buffalo with starts in the offensive zone, followed by Matt Moulson and Sam Reinhart.
52 goalies have played at least 10 games so far, with both Anders Nilsson and Robin Lehner in the top 12 in save percentage. However, the top 5 all have 2.00 GAA or lower, while both Sabres goalies are closer to 2.50.
Now 5v4:
Kyle Okposo, Rasmus Ristolainen, Ryan O’Reilly, Matt Moulson, and Sam Reinhart are your Sabres with double digit power play points.
Moulson (7) and Okposo (6) lead Buffalo in PP goals, though Eichel is at 5 in half of Okposo’s power play time.
Ryan O’Reilly wins 63% of his power play faceoffs. He’s won more power play faceoffs alone than the rest of the team combined (78 for ROR, 77 for everyone else). It’s good to have a role.
And 4v5:
Giving up the body – Josh Gorges has blocked 21 shots on the penalty kill, 5 more than the next Sabre.
Buffalo has a lone short-handed goal. Two teams have none, and all the rest have more. The Flames have 7.
This might have something to do with that last one – the Sabres have been short-handed 129 times, the Flames? 170.
I’m not a stat-head, but these are things that jumped out at me as I clicked around at NHL.com and Puckalytics. What else would you like to see?
I turned on the World Junior Championship final game last night and watched overtime and the shootout, which had me on the edge of my seat. The USA managed to pull it out in the end, with Tyler Parsons stopping all 5 shots in the shootout, and Troy Terry was the hero again with the lone shootout score. Can’t wait for this tournament to come back to Buffalo next year!
The difficulty with being a Buffalo sports fan, is knowing when to be excited. And then when you DO get excited, something happens at the worst time to dampen your enthusiasm (Eichel gets injured, or your favorite football player mows down a pedestrian, or the Bills get put in a position to have their destiny in their hands and then eff it up). BUT, right now, it feels like a good time to flex those positive feelings about the Buffalo Sabres.
Since Eichel has returned from his injury, Buffalo has been building some momentum. They are 5-3-2 in the last 10, goals are actually being scored, and they are edging slowly up the standings. Perhaps the best part is the fact that they’ve won some games at home, which is a nice change from last season. That the Sabres can be 4 points away from a playoff spot while scoring the least number of goals in the Eastern conference is a great sign for their chances to actually make the playoffs. If they can stay top 10 in the league in goals allowed and keep improving in goal scoring (and a healthy Jack/ROR/Ennis will help with this), we should be in the race at the end of the year and not wondering whether or not we tanked hard enough.
Is there a chance things could still go wrong? Sure, this is Buffalo. There’s always another level of suck possible. The Sabres, at least seem less likely to go there than in the past few years, and that’s worth celebrating.
The Sabres open their schedule tomorrow night, hosting Montreal, and announced their roster just before the deadline yesterday. Notable keeps are Derek Grant, Hudson Fasching and Casey Nelson, who have all had good camps. Though some of that may be the fact that both O’Reilly and Okposo are still hurting and questionable for tomorrow.
The other huge news of the day was Rasmus Ristolainen finally signing a new 6 year deal, with a $5.4 million cap hit. A very solid deal for a player who still has room to grow. I’d like to see him take a step defensively this year, while still managing 10+ goals/45+ points.
I’ve seen a bunch of talk about the Sabres being picked to finish last or nearly so in a few publications. I’m with the rest of you that it seems unlikely, but I can’t fault them too much. Most of our “FUCK YEAH PLAYOFFS” feelings come from the idea of all the young kids getting better and progressing at a steady rate. I’d like that to be true, but it just doesn’t happen. No one was more positive about Tyler Myers than me, starting out with 2 solid years, thinking he was going to keep progressing into superstar status. It hasn’t happened – he’s more Bouwmeester than Chara. I’m hyped, but I’m okay with people outside of Buffalo not buying in yet. Still, I kind of want to re-do Prediction Watch for this season so I can revisit it after the season.
(10/13 Update) Well THAT escalated quickly. I wrote this yesterday before Eichel’s high ankle sprain came to light. I don’t think it greatly affects the season, barring some weirdly lingering issue, but you have to laugh at the luck here. “Hey, at least we’ve got some great young players to watch!” “LOL NO sorry you don’t.”
It’s easy to dislike Team USA right now. John Tortorella is an opinionated dip, Patrick Kane’s on the team, all that. So it’s a good thing that Buffalo has an in with the actual fun team at the World Cup of Hockey: Team North America! Jack Eichel scored their first goal in a rout of Finland, on a too good to be true line of Eichel, McDavid and Auston Matthews. Who knows if they’ll struggle against stronger competition (they play Russia tonight) but they’re going to be fun to watch no matter what.
