Beating up on the Leafs

The Sabres team has had wild swings between success and failure recently, and solidly destroyed the Toronto Maple Leafs 5-0 Wednesday night. Thomas Vanek lead the way with a natural hat-trick while Tim Connolly scored his fifth goal in the past five games, and Drew Stafford scored another to continue his recent success.

Ryan Miller, who did not play last game against the Ducks, got his second straight shutout, after facing only 16 shots. Toronto has rookie Justin Pogge in net, but the loss was more of a result of the poor showing by those in front of him.

Buffalo has been short on defensemen for some time now. They got some help with the return of Numminen in this game, but Rivet still looks as if he is playing hurt, and did limp off to the dressing room at one point last game, before returning and playing for around 18 minutes in the game. At a few times Buffalo used five offensive players on the powerplay, and this was probably so that they could give their depleted defense as much rest as possible.

Still over the past six games Buffalo has dominated in this 5-0 win over Toronto, a 2-0 win over Phoenix and a 10-2 win over Edmonton, but then struggled in losses to Tampa Bay, Calgary, and Anaheim. It's hard to tell if all of these injuries on defense are actually hurting the team or not.

In an odd occurrence I agree with the three stars selection for this game. Buffalo next play the Canadians at home on Friday.

Official Three Stars

Thomas Vanek

Ryan Miller

Drew Stafford

My Three Stars

Thomas Vanek (three goals, one assist, six shots)

Ryan Miller (shutout, 16 saves)

Drew Stafford (one goal, one assist, plus three)