Shutdown Pair

Tag: Ryan Miller

  • It’s a GAME

    You know, I’m dreading this game.  Not because Buffalo has sucked since game 3 of the season.  Not because we’ll get a hundred and fifty Miller/Lucic references.  Because it won’t live up to the hype.  They almost never do, these ‘team toughness’ statement games.  Oh, Lucic might fight somebody, John Scott may terrorize some poor sap, but at the end of the day, what the Sabres need is two points.  They need to GET RIGHT.  They could hardly pass the puck with a purpose in the last game, the only reason they were in that game at all is the Leafs suck just as bad.  This might mark me down as a ‘bad’ fan for a certain portion of the fanbase, the part that thinks adding -mafia to the team name makes you sound intimidating.  I don’t care.  Two points, awesome goals, that’s what needed.

    Now, if John Scott were to rip Lucic’s spine out, Mortal Kombat style, I’d probably nod and say ‘Good Job, Hodor’…but not if it’s 4-1 Bruins at the time.  Sorry.

  • Sabres Gameday LIVE – Leafs at Sabres

    I am blogging from the press box tonight, so this post will be updated after each period (and maybe once or twice before the game) with my thoughts as I have them.

    Pre-game thoughts:

    • Grigorenko stays.  It makes the most sense.  He hasn’t been out of place, and it isn’t like he’s keeping somebody else important from playing.  There’s plenty of time to lock him up if he’s good.
    • Passed RJ while getting a hot dog.  That never gets old.  Good to see him up here.
    • Still cold.

    First period thoughts:

    • First few minutes has some good pressure for Buffalo.  Foligno and Scott both involved.
    • Good clear by Pominville when they needed one.
    • Myers showing his physical side a bit.  Love that.
    • On the Leafs goal, Miller had the stop but there was nobody around to clear McClement away.  Should’ve caught it, though.  Letting Kessel skate right in afterwards too for a chance.
    • Great patience by Pominville to wait for the traffic to clear before shooting. And as @BNHarrington said, great keep in by Ehrhoff.
    • Weber’s fight was a great response, though Brown is a tough customer.  Kaleta went to the locker room, not what you want for a guy that has neck issues.

    Second period thoughts:

    • Ott keeps winning faceoffs.  Is he the only one?
    • No Kaleta yet.
    • Just after I complained about Stafford being weak on the puck, he deals to a streaking Sekera who shelfs a backhander.  Nicely done.
    • And then they give it right back.  Typical of the D this year.  Ugh.
    • The Sabres D has quickly melted down and can’t clear.  3-2.
    • Some small signs of life at the 7 minute mark.  Probably means another Toronto goal is forthcoming.
    • Vanek trying to dig the puck out from under Reimer there.  Can someone else show up?
    • Ott stuffed on a breakaway…should’ve deked.  Hindsight of course.
    • 4 minutes of penalty by Hecht.  One down, one yet to be killed.

    Third period thoughts:

    • Grigorenko back at it after being benched for a while, had a solid shot.
    • Foligno shows what to do when you lose the draw – paste the opposing player to the boards and try to get it back.
    • Great rebound clean-up by Mikhail Grigorenko for his first goal, and a great celebration with Foligno.  Great job, kid.  Tie game.
    • Sabres are working harder on the puck  now, and it shows.
    • Myers is not right.  Had a chance to wind up and blast one from the point, and Reimer snagged it easily.
    • Heartbreaker.  Miller doesn’t seal the shortside and the goal sneaks in with a fraction of a second left.  Frattin.

  • Deep Breaths

    It’s been a whirlwind to start the season, with games packed in together right from the start after a very short camp.  It went well for the Sabres, though, with two wins in two tries, and some worries relieved about the situation at center.  Buffalo had a day off yesterday, so too should we sit back, take a few deep breaths, and make sure we don’t get too amped up juuuuuust yet.

    Now, I’m not saying go all doom and gloom like your typical WGR caller (or anchor).  I’ll never get tired of seeing Vanek do his thing, and having the good Ryan Miller to start the season is pretty awesome too.  But the downside of Vanek having been on the ice for every Sabres goal is that means other lines aren’t scoring at even strength.  They still haven’t played a whole game at their highest level.

    But you know, that can go both ways.  They have plenty of time to get better at faceoffs, as an example.  Might even see a second or third line goal.  John Scott will win a fight (I kid, I kid, please don’t kill me).  Miller might have an ordinary game.  Vanek will go a few games without a point.  I know everybody had been saying “it’s a sprint!” this year, poking fun at the normal “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” proverb, but really, it’s a half-marathon.  Buffalo still has 46 more games.  It doesn’t take a whole mess of games to get behind – and you don’t have as many to recover if you do – but nobody is toast after 2 games, nor is anyone a slam-dunk to make the playoffs.  Should you like what you see so far?  I do.  It’s been a ton of fun, and hey, two wins after two games is right where you want to be.  Enjoy it, and don’t jump off a bridge, or write poorly spelled twitter/blog diatribes, if they lose a game or two.

  • Thus Ended

    The Sabres can no longer make the playoffs, and have one more meaningless game.  In the short term, I was ticked about it last night, but today, not so much.  It was a very difficult season in many ways, with injuries, underachievement, and media sniping.  The highs were really high, and the lows were rock-bottom.  We saw veterans and prospects leave (Gaustad, Gragnani, Kassian) and got a few new contributors (Hodgson, Sulzer).

    How do I feel about this season?  I’m disappointed that it won’t be going on to the playoffs, for sure.  There is talent here – and I think the deadline improved that overall – but injuries and some questionable play overrode that.  Next year’s roster won’t be that different, barring trades, as there are already 20 players under contract.  Hecht, Boyes, and the surprising Sulzer are UFAs, with TJ Brennan, Tyler Ennis and Patrick Kaleta as RFAs.  I can’t imagine either Hecht or Boyes being back.  Sulzer is interesting, though.  I’d love to keep him, as he showed some decent skills and kind of took that 6/7 D spot from Weber.  Ennis is a no-brainer, and I imagine Kaleta gets a deal.  That’s 13 forwards, including Marcus Foligno and Corey Tropp.  If Brennan and McNabb start with Rochester, that leaves Regehr, Ehrhoff, Myers, Leopold, Sekera, and Weber as the D pending something with Sulzer.  Of course, Miller/Enroth in the net.

    Do I think that’s where we end up?  I do not.  The Pegula era Sabres have already shown they are willing to deal guys to get guys, and we have parts and pieces other teams would covet.  July 1 is going to be interesting.  Buffalo will be a player again, a destination for players who hopefully see the improvements and potential here.

    I might post about the draft, and July 1, but expect this space to be fairly quiet in the offseason.  I’m planning on blog maintenance, such as trying different themes, stuff like that.  Might post up about the playoffs if the mood strikes, too.  I’ll still be on Twitter, and please check out my non-hockey gadget/movie/TV/book talk at Honk if you Love Justice.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Gameday 2011-2012 – Sabres at Hurricanes

    We get Tyler Myers back tonight!  For a guy who had struggled as much as he did before getting hurt, I’m pretty excited to see him tonight.  Even when not scoring, he should be an upgrade in front of Miller.  In beating Edmonton last game, Buffalo FINALLY scored more than two goals, something they’d only done once in the previous seven games.

    The news that Ruff plans to play Miller more here on out is not really surprising.  When Enroth started to struggle just as much as Ryan, there really is no downside to seeing if more PT helps Miller get rolling.  He can always go back to the Schedule later if it doesn’t help. *shrug*

    I am 80% certain I’ll be attending the viewing party at FNC tonight, with one or two of my kids.  Should be fun, even if my son is just in it for the hot dogs and popcorn.

  • Perspective, Again

    This comment at the Buffalo News article about the rest of the team needing to be like Vanek stopped me dead in my tracks:

    Listen, exactly one year ago, would it have been plausible that the expectation for the 2011-2012 season would have been President’s trophy and Stanley Cup? Come on, really? Do you realistically think Terry and Ted had that expectation for this season? The long term outlook for this team is not just good, it’s friggin’ great! The owner is a bleed-Sabres-blue high integrity guy who wants success more than any of the knuckleheads who post here. Color me naive, but even with the inconsistent team performance, I absolutely believe that the players want it too – why, because they say so and I don’t think they’re BS’ing me – I actually like them. It’s just not something you can wave a magic wand over – it’s going to take time, and not months-time, but years-time. Sorry about that reality for you gotta-have-it now-wantski’s.

    Dude, what?  A positive comment, thought out, with decent spelling, punctuation and grammar?  What the hell?  Dan from Charlotte, you are in the wrong place my man.  Don’t let the rest of the trolls over there eat your soul.  In all seriousness, I can see the right of what Dan says here.  I sometimes felt I was the only person who wasn’t in full-on freakout mode after the Sabres’ recent struggles.  I WANT them to win every game and win the cup and poop in the Leafs players’ gloves.  But it won’t be happening, not right away.  Having the money to spend to the cap and eat a bad contract or two and upgrade the facilities doesn’t mean the wins just roll in.  Do their chances go up?  Yes.  It does not mean, however, that James Reimer will simply bow and step aside to allow Vanek to score a quadruple hat trick the next time Buffalo goes to Toronto.

    Me, I’m here for the ride.  I learned a few years ago to stop letting sports teams make me miserable.  I will still get on the players not pulling their weight, raise up the ones who are raising their game, and when I attend as a fan, I’ll cheer and clap and chant and boo.  Let’s just do that and have fun.  The wins will be there.

    As for tonight, Buffalo is in Washington tonight, to try and beat the only team nice enough to lose to them in the past five games.  Miller is in tonight, maybe Enroth tomorrow.  Gragnani in for the injured Sekera, out ‘weeks’.  So there went a whole couple of days where we could think the Sabres were getting healthier.  Let’s go.

  • Which is it?

    Are the Sabres really as good as they looked last night?  Did getting two NHL players back in the lineup (even ones derided as much as Boyes) make that much of a difference?  Or were the Capitals really playing that poorly?  I’m inclined to think the latter, and I only heard the first period on the radio and watched the other two.  There was a lot of cruising around by Caps players, and Buffalo could consistenly break out of their zone and gain entrance on the offensive side.  For any of us that have watched Sabres games this year, you know it hasn’t been THAT hard to stop ’em from doing that.

    Christian Ehrhoff did some great work last night.  Scored what turned out to be the game winner, blocked four shots, had some other solid defensive plays.  Robyn Regehr frustrated Ovechkin quite a bit, including that hard hit behind the net.  Though my favorite ‘hit’ on Ovi is when he ran into Kassian and went flying backwards right along with him.  I’d like to give a shout out to Roy also, 21 minutes of ice time, had a point, won 65% of his faceoffs.

    Michal Neuvirth deserves ‘special’ recognition for being terrible, letting in 3 goals on 6 shots, none of which was some amazing, unstoppable shot.  He had nothing last night, not sure if it could be fatigue since there was that whole Christmas break thing.  On the other hand, it was Miller’s sixth straight start, and it was his best in that stretch, with both goals scored on him due to a screen in front.  The first might’ve even been goalie interference.

    The rest of the week is busy for Buffalo, as they play the Devils tomorrow in Jersey, then go to Washington for these same Caps for Friday.  Saturday (Tux and Pucks) they return home for the Senators.  Enroth one of those games if Lindy still has ‘The Schedule’ going.  Might try for a press pass for Saturday depending on what ends up happening for New Year’s Eve.  We don’t usually go out.