As Easy Win over Los Angeles

The Sabres got what may have been their easiest win of the year in a 5-0 victory over the Los Angeles Kings. The Sabres scored goal after goal on the luckiest and most random bounces. Meanwhile the Kings were shutout by good play from both the defense, and Ryan Miller.

Matt Ellis and Chris Butler were brought up from Portland for this game, and both played well. Afinogenov and Paetsch were sat out to make room for them, while Gaustad is out short term with an injury. This was Butler's first NHL game, and got an assist when the rebound from one of his shots bounced right to Adam Mair.

Bringing up Ellis was an odd choice as Kennedy or Mancari could have been called up instead. Still Ellis played well, and scored his first goal of the season.

The Sabres are back on the road as they play against Montreal Saturday night.

Official Three Stars

Ryan Miller

Derek Roy

Adam Mair

My Three Stars

Ryan Miller (shutout, 40 saves)

Derek Roy (one goal, two assists)

Chris Butler (one assist, plus two in NHL debut)

Mair and Peters, Buffalo's plus minus leaders

Over the past two games the Buffalo Sabres have played very poorly, getting outscored 11-3. Over these two games only two players avoided going negative in their plus/minus rating, and they are Adam Mair and Andrew Peters.

Peters only has a combined 10:41 of ice time over the two games, and they contributes somewhat to this statistic, but it doesn't change the fact that he is still doing better then the rest of the team. Perhaps the fact that he doesn't have such offensive expectations helps, but he also has four shots on net over the past two games, the same number of shots that the minus five rated Derek Roy has. Over the past two games at least Peters has been one of Buffalo's best players.

Patrick Kaleta also has a neutral rating against the Penguins, but only had six minutes of even strength ice time, and did not play the night before.

Adam Mair is the lone player to be in the positive over the past two games. He is only plus one with slightly less ice time then most players on the team, but that is the best that the Sabres can offer. He earned the assist for the one goal he was on the ice for, and wasn't on the ice for any goals against, not even any powerplay goals.

Last season the big disappointment that Vanek had was not the fact that his goal scoring slipped a little, but rather his plus minus dropped over 50 points from being the league leader to being in the negative. Vanek (and the whole team), now have to get back to playing two way hockey.

Holding onto win over the Blues

The Sabres beat the St Louis Blues 4-3, but this game should not have ended up nearly as close. Buffalo went up 3-0 early in the first period, and kept on dominating the play throughout the game. However they were unable to score many more. Vanek had some many opportunities on breakaways, but was unable to find the back of the net on any of them. Kotalik also had a large number of chances, and was unable to capitalize on any of them.

Tim Connolly looked good in this game, scoring the second goal, and getting the primary assist on the third. Connolly did appear to get injured after taking a hit to the head. The game winning goal was scored by Henrik Tallinder, who picked up his first goal of the season. The game's first goal went to Adam Mair, who had a fabulous shot that the goalie really had no chance on.

Peters played in this game, but only saw 1:26 of ice time, all within the first half of the game and used it to get into two fights. Peters actually did decent in his fights, but did not contribute anything to the actual hockey portion of the game. Kaleta and Stafford sat out this game instead. Paille who sat out last game was also back, and had a good night earning an assist and a team leading plus two. Teppo Numminen lead the Sabres in ice time, which given his age comes as a bit of a surprise.

Statistically the best players in the game were all for St. Louis. David Perron lead all players in points with three off of a goal and two assists. He was also a plus three, as was Patrik Berglund who earned a goal and an assist. West Seneca native Lee Stempinak also played well earning a goal and an assist in the loss.

The game had very few penalties besides the fighting majors, and saw very little time that was not even strength. Neither team scored on any of their few powerplays.

Official Three Stars

Henrik Tallinder

David Perron

Daniel Paille

My Three Stars

David Perron (one goal, two assists, plus three)

Tim Connolly (one goal, one assist)

Patrik Berglund (one goal, one assist, plus two)

Gaustad out for a month

After injuring his thumb in a fight on Sunday, Paul Gaustad will need surgery to repair the ligaments. Given that there is still over a week until the season begins, and that he shouldn't be out for too long (and has a history of returning before expected) this shouldn't hurt the Sabres too badly as they have plenty of depth upfront.

Buffalo's other injured forward, Adam Mair is well on the road to recovery. While he is still a bit of a long shot to make the roster on opening day, he is not likely to miss more than the first two games.

Eight is (more than) enough

The Buffalo Sabres embarrassed the Carolina Hurricanes, beating them 8-1 in a game that wasn't even close. Buffalo ran away with this one, only allowing a late power play goal with less than two minutes left in the game.

Kotalik had two goals in the game including the first one at just 1:32 into the first. The Sabres have now scored the first goal of the game in seven straight games after failing to do so the 13 games preceding that.

Mair got a goal in his first game back since the fifth of November. It was a nice goal right of the faceoff where he was feed the puck from Gaustad to pick up the easy goal.

Practically everyone on the Sabres had a good game. Afinogenov played great and was on the ice for half of the Sabres goals for the night. Max had an awesome shot go in, as did many other of the Sabres in this blow out win.

Miller played well, but seems completely unable to get a shutout. No matter how well he plays he has a tendency to blow his shutout bids on easy shots late in the third. Miller has played much better for a few seasons now then his shutout count would seem to indicate.

Official Three Stars

Maxim Afinogenov

Ales Kotalik

Ryan Miller

My Three Stars

Derek Roy (plus three points, one goal, and one assist)

Maxim Afinogenov (on ice for four goals including one of his own)

Jaroslav Spacek (plus three, three points)

Ales Kotalik (two goals, this was a four star game)

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...

Buffalo Comes back to beat the Leafs

The Sabres brought back memories of last season as they relied upon a dramatic comeback, followed by a dominating overtime performance to win the game.

At first the game started looking like the one against the Capitals in that the Sabres looked as if they were going to be shut out to lose a close one. Toronto was able to go into the third period with a 2-0 lead. However, also like the Capitals game Buffalo was able to come back with a flood of late goals in order to win the game.

The Sabres finally got on the board with only 12 minutes left in the game, as Adam Mair scored off a pass from Roy. Mair who had even less goals then Spacek last season already has two this year and is actually tied with scoring machine Thomas Vanek so far. Vanek himself got a goal tonight as did Pominville and Hecht.

Ales Kotalik who is by far the teams best shoot out player prevented the shootout in this game by scoring unassisted with only four seconds left in overtime.

This was Thibault's first start of the season, and he was good enough for the win. Spacek left the game late in the third with an unspecified injury, no details on that yet. The Sabres get a few rest days before they have to play Columbus on Friday night.

Official Three Stars

Ales Kotalik

Tim Connolly

Chad Kilger

My Three Stars

Ales Kotalik - (came up big in OT)

Jason Pominville - (a goal and an assist)

John Pohl - (three assists for Toronto)