Sabres lose Enroth's first start

Tim Thomas and Ryan Miller are two of the best goalies in the NHL right now, and are the favorites to start for team USA in the Olympics in a few months. However instead of a battle between the Olympians both coaches started their backups and a match-up between Jhonas Enroth and Tuukka Rask.

This was Enroth's first NHL start, and despite the lopsided loss, he played pretty well. None of the 4 goals against him were bad, and he came up big on a few breakaways throughout the game, including one by former Sabre Daniel Paille.

The Sabres need to start playing better, losing two in the row now for the first time this season, and still yet to get a single win without Miller in net.

Life without Ryan Miller

With Ryan Miller's ankle sprain he will be out for some time, and will leave the Sabres without one of the leagues best goaltenders to rely on. From personal experience I know that ankle sprains can mean anything as far as time out goes, but that the absolute worst thing you can do is to come back too early.

So for the short term that leaves Patrick Lalime and Jhonas Enroth as the Sabres goalies. Enroth is a promising prospect who played very well last season in Sweden and has looked decent so far this year in the AHL. He may well be the future goaltender for this team if something happens to Miller.

However in the coming days Lalime will be getting the vast majority of the starts. His record this season had not been too good, but more often then not that was the result of the play in front of him, and not Lalime playing poorly. Last season he had a winning record for a non-playoff team in Chicago getting a bunch of starts due to an injury to the starting goaltender there.

The other option is to trade for a goaltender, but with the trading deadline just over a week away there are only a limited number of options available. There is no obvious team looking to give up a quality goaltender and it is unlikely that the Sabres could pick up someone much better than Lalime. Detroit would probably trade Osgood, but given how he has played this season, the Sabres probably wouldn't want him. A trade for a big name player is more unlikely because Miller should be back in time for the playoffs, so this would be an even shorter term player rental.

The best option for the Sabres is to hope that their defense stays healthy and the Lalime is good enough to get the job done. He looked good the last two games in which he replaced Miller, lets now see him win some starts.

Sabres should be set in goal

The Sabres signed goalie Jhonas Enroth out of the Swedish league. While not good enough to be a starter, he could easily be the Sabres backup in this upcoming season. With Thibault not expected to be resigned, having a promising rookie in the number two position would be a good fir for the team.

Enroth was a finalist for rookie of the year last year in Sweden, and despite not being on that great of a team, had a pretty good year himself. He is only 19 and could very well take over the starting position if he is still here in six or so years.

At the very least having a possible future backing up in goal is much preferable to having a veteran on a one year contract.