How Peters helps.

I've stated before my preference for Peters to be scratched, but perhaps that is ignoring some of the evidence. The Sabres play better when someone on the team picks up a fighting major. The team plays even better still when that someone is Andrew Peters.

The Sabres are currently 32-27-9 a pace at which they will end the season in ninth place with a 39-33-10 record. However in games in which Buffalo picks up a fighting major the Sabres are winning 59% and have twice as many ins as losses for a record of 10-5-2. The record is even better yet if Peters is the one brawling, as the Sabres are 7-2-1 in those games with a 70% win percentage.

Assuming the Sabres fought in every game, over the course of a season while keeping up at this pace, the Sabres would end the year 48-24-10 (good for 106 points). If Peters fought every night and Buffalo kept up that pace then Buffalo would finish the year 57-16-9 (good for 123 points). This would translate into the best season ever in the history of the team.

The problem may be in expecting Peters to be racking up the points. Peters already has his goal for the year, and needs instead to concentrate on dropping the gloves. If he fights out the season the Sabres could finish strong going 10-3-1. That record would give Buffalo a 98.4% chance of making the playoffs. In fact that may be their only chance.

NOTE:I had formally looked at this earlier in the season.

Fighting for the win

As I've noted before the Sabres have not been prone to get into fights this season. However out of the four games in which they have fought they have won three of them.

Buffalo so far has gotten into fights with Atlanta(2), Tampa, Florida(2), and Washington. Buffalo's fighters so far this season are Peters(2), Gaustad(2), Mair and Stafford. So it appears if seeing Peters get into a brawl may actually be good for the team. On the other hand, all of these games were against teams in the southeast with losing records.

Random stat from all of this? In games in which their is a fight and Miller is the starting goal tender the Sabres are undefeated. 3-0 is good no matter how circumstantial...

Keeping the gloves on

The Sabres have done very little fighting this year (even after a few games against Ottawa). According to hockeyfights.com the Sabres have not had any fights since two against Florida all the way back on November second. Peters himself has only had one fight so far this season, and that was a day short of being a full month ago. Peters is on track to have only four fights all regular season, and this is after he got into three fights in five preseason games.

With only five fights so far on the season, Buffalo has had the fewest fights in the entire NHL. Meanwhile, Philadelphia is averaging a fight per game.

Game against the capitals tonight, hopefully they can put themselves over .500 (even if they don't drop the gloves)...