Yet another loss

The Sabres are now seemingly unable to win, and are more or less out of the playoff picture at this point. Even if they were to win out the season, they would need so much help, and currently only have a 9.8% chance at making the postseason.

The Rangers 5-3 win was much closer than most of the Sabres other games of late, but still resulted in a loss. The Sabres actually outshot New York 40-31, but were sloppy at times, giving to many chances to the Rangers. New York got some major help from Henrik Lundqvist who played well throughout the night.

Buffalo's next game is Wednesday against the Florida Panthers, but it is hard to say at this point that it matters.

Official Three Stars

Nikolai Zherdev

Nik Antropov

Ryan Callahan

My Three Stars

Nik Antropov (two assists)

Ryan Callahan (two goals, three shots)

Henrik Lundqvist (37 saves)

A Win mitigated by the possibility of injury

The Buffalo Sabres soundly beat the New York Rangers on Saturday night 4-2. The Sabres may be in trouble as a whole though as Ryan Miller had to leave the game injured. Currently it isn't clear how bad it is, but Buffalo needs its starting goaltender going into the playoffs.

Buffalo soundly outplayed the Rangers for the first two periods. Then following Miller's injury at the beginning of the third, they started to allow the Rangers to get some shots on net. Still after allowing a powerplay goal right after going in Lalime played well enough to give Buffalo the win.

Tallinder returned for this game, and the defense was all around better as a result. The Rangers first goal where two players were on the guy with the puck looked like the only real defensive mistake that was made all game, and Buffalo is now doing better as far as injuries go, although having Miller and Vanek out isn't exactly ideal.

Official Three Stars

Derek Roy

Daniel Paille

Tim Connolly

My Three Stars

Derek Roy (one goal, two assists, plus two)

Daniel Paille (one goalthree shots)

Ryan Miller (zero goals against, 20 saves)

Miller wins in the shootout

While Ryan Miller is a good goalie, the knock against him seems to be that he doesn't steal games and win them on his own. However last night he did just that, as the Sabres were only able to score one point, but earned a win through Miller's strong play.

Buffalo started out the game real well, then gave up a goal and played poorly for a long stretch of time. Then a quick turnover forced by Vanek got Buffalo a goal, and then they played well enough in the third and overtime to get to the shootout. Like he had all game Miller once again came through in the shootout, saving all three of the shots at his net.

The game had almost no penalties, with only two called against the Sabres and none against the Rangers. Buffalo killed off both of their shorthanded situations.

Tim Connolly was back, and while he didn't make the score sheet he played well. He may even be healthy enough to play again as the Sabres take on the Detroit Red Wings Saturday night.

Official Three Stars

Ryan Miller

Derek Roy

Scott Gomez

My Three Stars

Ryan Miller (43 saves and 3 for 3 in the shootout)

Thomas Vanek (forced the turnover for lone Buffalo goal)

Derek Roy (one goal, 4 shots, 10 of 15 on faceoffs)

Sabres triumph over the Rangers

The Buffalo Sabres beat one of the best teams of this early hockey season, giving the New York Rangers their first lost of the season. The Sabres did so in a way that was very rare for this team last year, with the man advantage. Buffalo scored both of their first two goals with the man advantage, and then got their third goal shorthanded.

The shorthanded goal was Vanek's second in two games, and the shows much potential for the penalty killing that Buffalo has this year. Both Paille and Vanek flew down the ice to create a beautiful play for that goal. Furthermore the Sabres have yet to allow a goal against this season while on the penalty kill, and have overall been very good at keeping the puck out of their own net, not giving up more than a single goal in any of their games so far.

Matt Ellis got in his first game as a Buffalo Sabre, but had limited ice time in the game. Clarke MacArthur however has been showing that he deserves to be on the team. After only being on the opening night line up due to Connolly being injured, he has now scored two goals in the season's first three games and has overall looked to be a very good player.

Official Three Stars

Thomas Vanek

Ryan Miller

Ales Kotalik

My Three Stars

Thomas Vanek (two goals)

Clarke MacArthur (the other goal)

Ryan Miller (only one goal against)

The Rangers start the season well, while Chicago falls apart

After starting the season with two wins over Tampa Bay in Prague, the New York Rangers have just kept on winning. The team has improved it's record to an impressive 5-0 start in a league with amazing parity. The only other undefeated team in the Eastern conference are the Buffalo Sabres who are 2-0 on the year. The two teams will play against each other in their next games on Wenesday night. Still the Rangers are a bit of a surprise to be doing so well. This past offseason the team lost some of its offense with the departures of Shanahan and Avery.

A team who has not been doing so well are the Chicago Blackhawks. Well being highly touted in the offseason, so far the team has not lived up to its reputation. The team finally got its first point in a shootout loss to Nashville, but has looked lack luster so far this season. They have been playing well early in the game, but at the first sign of adversity have been completly falling apart are losing themsleves the games. They also have a bit of a goalie problem as Huet has not played nearly as well as they would have liked him to. He failed to save either of the two shots against him in the shootout and has let in a number of soft goals already this year.

NHL season starts in Europe

With games in Prague, and Stockholm the NHL season got underway yesterday as the Pittsburgh Penguins and the New York Rangers beat the Ottawa Senators and the Tampa Bay Lightning. Once again starting the regular season in Europe as they did last season in England. Two more games will be played in Europe today, and then the regular season in North America finally gets started later this week.

The Sabres have another preseason game late this afternoon, at the same time as the Bills game ensuring that nobody will be watching it. Then Buffalo gets its first real game of the season in on Friday.

Pominville on Fire (but one point is still not enough)

Jason Pominville had a good game, but the defense was still lacking as the Sabres lost in the shootout to the New York Rangers.

In addition to Tallinder being out, both Spacek and Kalinin both got injured this game as well. Neither player had been doing well before getting hurt, but this doesn't really help the team. With Campbell traded, Numminen still out for the season and these three injured, and Paetsch, Pratt, and Sekera all playing poorly that leaves only Lydman. To his credit he played good. However he saw only 29:27 of ice time. While that may seem like a lot, Buffalo needs him to be out there for the full sixty minutes or else we don't have a chance. Fortuneatly Tallinder may be back by Wednesday, I'd split the line up and make sure either Lydman or Tallinder are on the ice at all times.

Like Lydman, Pominville was also carrying his weight. He scored the first goal of the game 16 seconds in, and then had another one of his shots deflected for Buffalo's other goal. Then in the shootout, he scored the only goal for Buffalo on a very nice shot. Derek Roy saw even more ice time than Pominville, and played very well himself.

The Sabres biggest problem was on the powerplay where they got one goal on seven powerplays. However one of those was a full two minute five on three opportunity, that took the Sabres around 65 seconds to even get a shot on net. The Sabres need to accept the gifts they are given.

Miller wasn't all that great for Buffalo either. He did ok, but should have had the first one that went by him, and was coming way out of the net again in the shootout.

Buffalo still has a chance, but needs to get some wins first. Buffalo's next game is against the Penguins.

Official Three Stars

Jason Pominville

Brandon Dubinsky

Paul Gaustad

My Three Stars

Jason Pominville (all of Buffalo's scoring)

Brendan Shanahan (one assist, plus one)

Toni Lydman (all of Buffalo's defense)

Mistakes may keep Sabres out of the playoffs

The Buffalo Sabres lost to the New York Rangers 4-3 in a game that was filled with mistakes. Turnovers and bad goaltending plagued the Sabres all game long in a game that was very important in the standings.

Miller played poorly all game long, giving up really bad rebounds, and then being way out of position on two of the goals against the team. However he really wasn't getting much help from the defense either. Still if you let Avery score on you, you're playing pretty bad.

The Sabres brought up Marc-Andre Gragani for his first ever NHL game. He was out for the opening faceoff, but only ended up seeing 6:28 in ice time during the game. He played alright but took two penalties.

The Sabres killed off all three of their shorthanded situations, but were unable to score when they were up a man, although the Sabres powerplay actually looked pretty good this game.

The Sabres though are going to have to play much better than this, and they are going to have to beat the teams like the Rangers who are competing for the same spot in the playoffs. Once you get in anything can happen, but you need to win a few to get in first.

Official Three Stars

Sean Avery

Derek Roy

Michal Rozsival

My Three Stars

Ales Kotalik (two goals, plus one in the loss)

Sean Avery (one goal, one assist)

Brandon Dubinsky (one goal, one assist)

Miller stops next to nothing

Ryan Miller had been stopping everything lately, but was not nearly as good in the opening minutes of Saturday's afternoon game against the Rangers. In the opening twelve and half minutes of the game, Miller let four goals past him. He only let in four goals in the last three games combined. Regardless the Sabres were unable to come back from that defecit and lost the game 5-1.

Official Three Stars

Brandon Dubinsky

Sean Avery

Jaromir Jagr

My Three Stars

Sean Avery (two goals)

Brandon Dubinsky (three points, one goal, plus three)

Jaromir Jagr (two assists, plue three)

Pushing for the playoofs

The Sabres have gone an impressive 8-0-2 in their last ten games and are making a serious push to get into the post season. Things are complicated by the fact that the Southeast division is guaranteed at least one team, so beating the Capitals isn't going to make much of a difference. The one team they do have to beat is the New York Rangers.

Currently the Sabres are expected to have a 71.8% chance of making the playoffs, with a minimum of 14 wins needed to be expected to be given a spot in the postseason. This is the best the Sabres odds have been all season, but they need keep winning in order to keep it up.

The Rangers sit just one point behind Buffalo, and are the Sabres opponents Saturday afternoon. However with three games still to go against this team in what little is left of the season, these could potentially be big games.

If Miller can keep playing like he has, the Sabres should have no problem. They just have to hope the Drury keeps the half-hearted, low scoring mentality that he has had all season, and that he doesn't suddenly become the clutch player he was last season against the Rangers in the playoffs, because we all know that there is no stopping that.

In a lackluster performance, the Sabres drop their tenth straight

The Sabres have now lost ten straight games, as they were beat by the New York Rangers 2-1. The Sabres however did not deserve to win this game, and seemed to put very little effort into their play.

Miller should have made the easy stop on the Ranger's second goal, but the blame for the loss really goes towards Buffalo's inability to score. The puck was almost never in the Rangers end of the ice in the second and third periods, and the Sabres were outshot 25-15 during that time frame.

Buffalo's powerplay wasn't any better as they were unable to score on five chances including 1:52 of 5v3 time. With their almost two full minutes of the two man advantage, the Sabres were only able to manage two shots on goal. As bad as that was the team did even worse when only up by one player.

The line of Hecht, Pominville, and MacArthur were plus one in the game though, and probably put forth the teams best effort all night.

As good as Chris Drury was last season, I expected to notice him out on the ice a little more, but he didn't register too much of a presence in this game, and so far has had a rather poor experience with the talented, but underperforming Rangers this season.

Official Three Stars

Petr Prucha

Brandon Dubinsky

Blair Betts

My Three Stars

Petr Prucha (one goal, two points)

Brandon Dubinsky (one goal, two points)

Jason Pominville (a goal and plus one in the loss)