Shutdown Pair

Tag: sabres

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • What constitutes a ‘Blockbuster’ trade?

    [poll id=”6″]

    Just what it says.  Would you consider it a ‘blockbuster’ deal if, say, Roy and a pick went to Anaheim for one of the big three names bandied about?  Would that be enough to shake up the team, in your mind?  Or do multiple core guys need to go?  Not sure where I am on this scale.

  • Duck Season

    Much more exciting than the Sabres’ recent games, at least for fans, is the fact that the GM of the Ducks has declared their roster open for business, with only Selanne and Koivu off limits.  They’ve already tried a coaching change, and are still only 1 point away from being the worst team in the NHL, so now it’s roster shakeup time.  We’ve talked about Bobby Ryan before (blast from the past there – remember when Kaberle had trade value?) and Ryan Getzlaf would be the center everyone dreams of.  That’s not even mentioning Corey Perry.  And hey, maybe we could get Toni Lydman back.  That would be kind of fun.

    Interesting that Bob Murray wants ‘core players’ in return for his core players if he trades them, not picks or prospects.  That creates an atmosphere where an actual blockbuster trade might really happen.  As for who can go from the Sabres…well, I’ve had ‘Untouchables’ the past few years, but not anymore.  There are two players I would be upset over if they got traded, Myers and Vanek, but if Darcy got a good return, I could probably be brought over to his side.  I just don’t think you trade your best goal-scorer when goal-scoring has been a problem at times.  I like a lot of the other guys, but I like a lot of the Ducks too.  There’s never been a better time for a roster shake-up.  Get it done, Darcy

  • Woo, I guess

    Seems like the Sabres won last night.  They even got some secondary scoring from Gerbe and Stafford.  Huh.  Wish I had seen it.  In the battle of two banged-up teams, the one that hadn’t travelled from Long Island to Chicago to Buffalo for 3 in 4 won.  Amazing.  It would be just like this team to start winning during a stretch where a good portion of people can’t easily see them.

    Bright spots would be Stafford (1G 2A), Gerbe (1G 1A) as above, and I’d toss in Brayden McNabb who picked up two assists.  Buffalo is 4 points out of 7th in the East with that win.

    By the way, the Edmonton media is a bunch of whiny annoying bitches.  Whether declaring that Kaleta is worse than Matt Cooke, or lamenting a quiet arena on a weekday for an underachieving team with a Western opponent, they all came off as super lame last night.  Cover the game, man.

  • Unwatchable Games

    I am stuck with TWC in the short-term, so no more Sabres on TV for me beyond the Versu-er, NBC Sports Network games and the like.  I can’t even fill in my knowledge this month by being pressbox blogger guy as they are away for most of the games, and 2 of the 3 home games are this week.  Ugh.  I have hope for a speedy resolution to this, but I have no illusions that it will be so.  If I have time and the inclination tonight, I may live-tweet what I assume is happening during the game, based on the box score.

  • 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.