No comeback against Ottawa

The Sabres failed in their comeback against Ottawa losing the game 5-2 for their first regulation loss of the season.

Buffalo outplayed the Senators for most of the first period, but both Alex Auld and Patrick Lalime did a good job of keeping the pucks out of their nets. Ottawa eventually scored one on a powerplay with less then two minutes to go in the period.

In the second period the Sabres began to fall apart allowing Heatley to score a powerplay goal, just 19 seconds in. Ottawa also got two goals from Spezza in the second as well. Buffalo went down 5-0 early in the third, before finally scoring on the powerplay when MacArthur tipped in a nice shot by Afinogenov. Teppo Numminen then scored another goal in the game's final minute to make the score 5-2.

Despite the lopsided score Buffalo didn't actually play too poorly in this game. While their powerplay didn't score until late, they had been generating chances all along. Also the refs didn't help much calling a number of penalties against the Sabres without any real good reason at all, especially a very poor one on Afinogenov just before the end of the first.

Patrick Lalime looked very shaky in net after letting in the second goal. He had played very well in the first period, but was giving up too many rebounds for the rest of the game, and should have covered some of the ones that did end up going in. Hopefully this is just a bit of a fluke game for him and not the beginning of a downward spiral.

Mike Weber looked good in his first game with Buffalo this season and had three blocked shots. Afinogenov meanwhile still hasn't scored a goal this year, but did have the assist on both of the goals that Buffalo did score.

Official Three Stars

Jason Spezza

Dany Heatley

Antoine Vermette

My Three Stars

Alex Auld (25 saves)

Jason Spezza (two goals)

Dany Heatley (one goal, one assist, plus two)

Pre-Ottawa focus on Defense

According to James Mirtle, the Sabres have the oldest defense in the league, with 32.1 being the average age. Granted Numminen throws off these numbers significantly. Still I don't feel as if this is a bad thing, having a more veteran presence on defense like Buffalo has this year with Teppo and Rivet has so far looked to be a good thing.

Unfortunately Rivet is out with an injury, and Henrik Tallinder might be as well. Tallinder's injury does not appear to be serious, but leaves the possibility that he might not play against Ottawa.

If Henrik is out then Mike Weber would be called up from the Portland Pirates to take his place. Arguably he is even better the Paetsch who was put in as a replacement for Rivet. Weber played real well with Sekera at the end of last season, so expect those two to be paired up together again.

Injuries to Buffalo's defense look to hurt the team more than any injuries to their forwards would. Still Weber has shown himself to be a dependable player and I doubt Tallinder will be out for too long.

Buffalo's monday night opponent, the Ottawa Senators, have gotten off to a very poor start at 2-5-1. A fall was expected from Ottawa, but they still have a number of very good players and can not be taken lightly by Buffalo. Even the season the Sabres won the president's trophy they lost half of their games against Ottawa.

The season begins

After four games were played in Europe last weekend, the NHL season gets underway for real tonight with four games being played. Buffalo gets in their first game of the season tomorrow against the Montreal Canadians. Despite all the talk about the Sabres wanting to get off to a good start this season, the Canadians are a tough opponent, and will be good this year.

Weber was recently sent to Portland, to get Buffalo under the roster limit. Matt Ellis is remaining with the club, but it is still not cler if he will actually play in the game or not. Paetsche has been kept with Buffalo as well, but is expected to be a healthy scratch.

Chicago got a free conditional draft pick, by claiming former Sabre Doug Janik from waivers and then immediatly trading him back.

Looking to next season

After the last game there isn't too much reason to be looking forwards to the post season. So that leaves looking forward to next year. That begins with looking at the little good that came out of the last game and that is Mike Weber.

Weber managed to be plus two in a three point loss, and then picked up an assist to help the Sabres when it was looking like they could still win. Two games ago in the comeback win, Weber was an amazing plus five. Short story is that he has looked good in every single game that he has played with Buffalo this year. He has been one of the Sabres most reliable on the back end in his time up recently. He had an awesome blocked shot last game in which he was able to shut down a three on two situation. If we had brought him up all season instead of signing Pratt, we may still be looking at the playoffs right now.

That said I was pretty high on Paetsch last season, and the beginning of this one, and he hasn't quite been doing as well. While he has been better than Pratt or Funk, he's been rather even with Sekera and not really being as good as I had been hoping he would be. Likewise, this season I was looking forward to seeing how good Stafford would be playing the full season in the pros, and although not horrible, he has been a tad bit flat this year.

Also in the line up for the future, the Sabres have recently signed two kids out of college. These are defenceman Mike Kostka and forward Derek Whitmore. Whitmore is the more interesting signing as he is from the Rochester area, and can be considered a hometown player for the team. Seeing the Sabres make an effort to sign local talent is a good thing.

The Sabres play the Senators Thursday night. If the Sabres win out, they still have a chance.

Once again Ottawa ends our Season

Technically the Sabres still have a shot at this thing if they win out, but based on their play in the 6-3 loss to the Senators I highly doubt that is going to happen. How the team managed to fall apart so badly is beyond me. Worse yet the breakdown came from some of the teams better players.

While usually the among the best on the team, Hecht, Lydman, and Tallinder all had a rather poor showing in this game. Our top two defensemen ended the game a combined minus five with three giveaways. The Sabres best two way player (Hecht) finished the game minus three. Even Gaustad had a less then stellar game. If these players don't show up there is no way Buffalo is ever going to win.

That said, the Sabres were by far the best team in the first two and a half periods of this game. While the score was 1-1 going into the third, the Sabres had far more chances, and were getting stopped by lucky goaltending more than anything else. One huge mental lapse by the Paetsch and Pratt pairing allowed the Senators an easy goal in the first, but for the most part only rookie Lee in his first ever NHL game looked impressive for the Sens.

Then the Sabres made an even bigger mental mistake, somehow allowing a three on one while being up a player. Shorthanded goals will kill you every time. After that Buffalo never really had any chance.

A (small) handful of players did play well for Buffalo. These were Derek Roy, Jason Pominville, and Mike Weber. Roy had two of Buffalo's goals, and did so with very little help from Vanek or any of his other line mates this game. Pominville continued to show how good he is as a captain, and played excellently both ways and even scored a goal.

Weber had an almost perfect game. Despite the three point loss, Weber ended the game plus two, and even earned a primary assist on Roy's second of the night. Even before that going into the second I was starting to fell that he may very well be our third best defenseman. After the third period I'm not even sure that he shouldn't be number one. Another rookie playing well was Brian Lee for the Senators. In his first NHL game, he played very solid and saved a sure goal by kicking the puck out of the net.

The Sabres play again in a day or so, but for real the season is over now.

Official Three Stars

Daniel Alfredsson

Derek Roy

Anton Volchenkov

My Three Stars

Daniel Alfredsson (two goals, three points, plus two)

Mike Weber (assist, plus two, had a perfect game)

Anton Volchenkov (goal, three points, plus three)

Finally a win

The Sabres finally decided to play hard in a game, and as a result came away with a convincing win, beating the Carolina Hurricanes 7-1.

The Sabres best player was Derek Roy who finished the game with eight shots and two goals. In fact he came very close to getting the hat-trick within the final ten seconds of the game. In fact almost the entire team had a good game, the only real exception being Afinogenov who was minus one and rang one off the post on what should have been an easy wide open goal.

Daniel Paille played well again, like he did last game and has suddenly become a very real scoring threat. Paille had a goal and an assist in this game to give him three goals, and four points over the last two games after what has been mostly a mediocre season for him. Given the massive number of overlapping penalties it's hard to analyze the teams powerplay effectiveness, but they allowed no powerplay goals against (although allowed one shorthanded), and scored a shorthanded goal themselves on a nice breakaway by Roy and Pominville.

The Sabres new defensemen played well this game as well. Sekera, Weber, and Funk all played very well in this game. Weber managed to be plus four with only seven and a half minutes of ice time. Funk only ended even in the plus minus column, but looked very solid especially for his first game up in a long while. Kaleta even got a goal.

Official Three Stars

Adam Mair

Andrej Sekera

Derek Roy

My Three Stars

Derek Roy (two goals, three points, plus three)

Adam Mair (one goal, three points, plus three)

Ryan Miller (only one goal against)

Memories of 2006

All of these injuries to the defense is starting to bring back memories of the Sabres collapse in the 2006 playoffs where Campbell was our one and only healthy defenseman. I'm not talking about the injures to make excuses for the team, but rather because the 7-3 loss to the Penguins was so bad I don't want to talk about it.

The Sabres flat out played very poorly in the game. Miller didn't mess up huge, but probably could have played better. Adam Mair, Andrej Sekera, and Nolan Pratt were all -3 on the game. Given the insane number of goals given up while shorthanded, that is even worse. Sekera and Pratt have been pretty bad all year and I have no idea why we are giving these two any ice time at all. Both finished the game with more minutes then Tallinder.

On the other side Mike Webber played very well. He was plus two in the game with a primary assist. If the rest of the defense played that well the Sabres would make the post season no problem. Lydman and Tallinder were also both plus one, but need to put in ten more minutes a game if they really want to help carry this team.

The other Sabres with respectable stats were the ones known for working hard. Hecht, Roy, Gaustad, and Bernier all had decent or good games, and Paille also picked up two goals for Buffalo. Lindy needs to start adjusting the playing time accordingly.

Back to the original topic the Sabres are very short on defensemen. Currently they have to do without Paetsch, Kalinin, Spacek, Numminen, and the traded Campbell. That's five defensemen out of our line up. All who came into the season as our top seven. I don't even know who the next defensemen in the system is. Rumour is that it may even be Pominville.

Official Three Stars

Sergei Gonchar

Tyler Kennedy

Darryl Sydor

My Three Stars

Tyler Kennedy (one goal, two assists)

Kristopher Letang (two points, plus three)

Danial Paille (two goals, plus two)

Needing a stronger back check...

Thomas Vanek is averaging 11.23 min of five on five play for every 60 minutes of even strength play that the Sabres have. It's a good thing that it isn't more. The Sabres opponents are averaging 6.16 goals for every sixty minutes that Vanek is on the ice. This is the third worst in the league among those averaging above 16.67% of 5 v 5 playing time. Linemate Derek Roy isn't far behind, allowing 5.70 goals against making him the fifth worst in this statistic.

Meanwhile Spacek doesn't look so good either. While Spacek has turned around his game on the offensive side of things, he hasn't been too much of a defensive defenceman, allowing 4.47 goals against per every sixty minutes played. Among those averaging significant playing time that makes him the 16th worst in the NHL. Sekera is actually a bit worse than Spacek, while offensively deficient Nolan Pratt is right behind them proving to also be defensively deficient.

Worst still for the Sabres is that Afinogenov and Ryan are not far behind either. While in his limited playing time Peters has yet for the opposing team to score a goal on him, the best defensive players for the team in this regard are Gaustad, Kotalik, and Paille. Hopefully this line starts to get some more playing time. On defense the best players are the injured Kalinin and the rookie Mike Weber, if there was ever a reason to play Weber ahead of Pratt this is it.

Rookie Defence

If Spacek isn't ready to play tonight the Sabres will use rookie Mike Weber in Kalinin's place instead. If this is the case expect Weber and Sekera to be on a line together and to get very little playing time. Either way giving Campbell anything short of Pronger like minutes would be a mistake for the Sabres. The defense could really use Numminen back, but it looks as if that may take a while...