Buffalo back on track

The Buffalo Sabre returned to their winning ways in a very important game against the Florida Panthers who are just above them in the standings. Buffalo ended the first period with a 2-1 lead, and was able to hold onto it until Vanek got a fluke goal towards the end of the third to put the game away for good. Still the Sabres had far more chances then the Panthers throughout the game and especially in the scoreless second period and deserved to win.

Florida's best chance at coming back was during a solid powerplay opportunity at the beginning of the third period, where they had over a minute of five on three hockey. The Sabres, especially Lalime, were able to shut them down.

The one goal that Lalime did let in was a bit soft, but he more than made up for it, making many big saves throughout the rest of the game.

Furthermore, not everything went right for Buffalo's opponents Thursday night. Besides the Florida Panthers' loss, the Flyers and Hurricanes also lost, while the Penguins and Canadians both only earned one point. Of the teams close to Buffalo in the standings only the Rangers won their game.

Official Three Stars

Patrick Lalime

Jaroslav Spacek

Henrik Tallinder

My Three Stars

Daniel Paille (one goal, plus one)

Patrick Lalime (30 saves, one goal against)

Michal Repik (one goal, plus one, three shots)

Buffalo wins second straight game

The Buffalo Sabres soundly beat the Phoenix Coyotes 5-1, in their second straight win after the trade deadline. New Sabre Dominic Moore was in the line up for this game, but the team was really lead by Tim Connolly who just signed a two year extension.

Connolly scored the first goal of the game, and cleanly won a face off for the primary assist on the Sabres second goal. Once Buffalo got up 2-0 early in this game, it was mostly over as the Coyotes did not appear capable of making a comeback at any point. Connolly went on to score another goal on the powerplay in the second period and earned an assist towards the end.

The refs certainly did not help at all in this game, with many calls being rather unfounded. Buffalo did a good job killing off the penalties though, and only allowed one goal against on the powerplay in the third. Buffalo did get two more powerplay goals of their own in the game's final minutes though.

MacArthur and Numminen sat out of this game, and Tellqvist is expected to get the start in Buffalo's next game Saturday night in Ottawa.

Official Three Stars

Tim Connolly

Andrej Sekera

Patrick Lalime

My Three Stars

Tim Connolly (two goals, two assists, plus two, six shots)

Andrej Sekera (one goal, one assist, plus two)

Patrick Lalime (29 saves, only one goal against)

A post trade deadline win

On this side of the trade deadline the Sabres are looking like a much better team. Buffalo didn't change all that much through trades, but looked really good in this game. While the Sabres have struggled to score in front of Lalime this season they got five goals Wednesday night against Montreal.

Lalime for his part also did really good especially in the first period when he saved all 18 shots taken on him. He came within a minute of earning the shutout before allowing a single goal against with a little over a minute to go. A trick Miller has pulled many times before.

Newcomer Tellqvist was the backup goalie for this game. Former Maple Leaf Dominic Moore was unable to get to the arena in time to play.

Afinogenov who is surprising still a Sabre played in the game for the first time in months. He was actually pretty good registering and assist, and two shots on net. Vanek was also back and played with a lower cage in addition to his visor.

Paul Gaustad and Derek Roy both had two goal games for Buffalo, each of them getting one goal on the powerplay. Gaustad's second goal then came shorthanded and was a real nice play. Spacek had the other real nice play in this game dancing around the defender, before blasting his shot into the net. He also had the primary assist on Roy's first goal.

Buffalo did really good on special teams in this game, scoring on two of four powerplays. Then on the penalty kill the Sabres killed off all six of Montreal's chances and even score a shorthanded goal.

Official Three Stars

Patrick Lalime

Paul Gaustad

Derek Roy

My Three Stars

Patrick Lalime (shutout, 38 saves)

Paul Gaustad (two goals, plus one, three shots)

Derek Roy (two goals, plus one, three shots)

Not playing offense in front of Lalime

Patrick Lalime has a disappointing record of 2-8-2, but is actually a far better player than his win loss record indicates. The problem is that whenever Lalime gets in a game the Sabres don't play any good offense in front of him.

Last Thursday he played great against the Hurricanes stopping 31 of 32 shots, but ended up with an shootout loss after the Sabres could only manage one goal themselves and none in the shootout.

In Lalime's last ten games played the Sabres only scored more than two goals in a single one of those games and averaged only 1.9 goals per game. Overall this season the Sabres are averaging 2.82 goals per game. If Buffalo would keep up this scoring pace when Lalime is in net, they would have been able to win a number of those games, especially as many of them were very close.

There is also no reason to see why the change in goaltender would result in any significant change to Buffalo's play. Both Lalime and Miller play a similar style, and neither of them are big puck movers like Turco and Biron are.

Buffalo just needs to player better in front of Lalime, and stop making him look so bad. Buffalo will get a good chance to do so Saturday night when they play the New York Islanders. If there was ever a chance to run up the score on an opponent, this is it.

Sabres only get one

The Sabres outplayed the Carolina Hurricanes through most of their 2-1 shootout loss, but were unable to take a commanding lead at any time. Buffalo outshot Carolina 37-32 and for most of the night were the all around better team. The Sabres real problem in this game is that they only had one goal to show for it, and ended the night with only one point.

Carolina for their part did just enough to hang on, and for the most part rode their goalie Cam Ward to the victory. Ward had 36 saves, plus he stopped all three shots in the shootout.

The Sabres shootout was in trouble this game, with none of the shooters scoring and even Kotalik not being able to get anything right. Buffalo was without Ryan Miller, who has been among the best goaltenders in the shootout this season, but still got a decent showing from Lalime who stopped two of three and had an all around solid game.

Official Three Stars

Cam Ward

Anton Babchuk

Joni Pitkanen

My Three Stars

Cam Ward (36 saves, one goal against, three for three in the shootout)

Patrick Lalime (31 saves, one goal against)

Anton Babchuk (one goal, five shots)

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.

Coming apart against the Hurricanes

The Sabres did not show up in this game at all. They gave no effort all night and failed to score any goals loosing the game 3-0.

Lalime was put in net for the final two periods, and while he played very well, the team in front of him was still bad. The one goal that did get past Lalime should never have counted, but given how bad the rest of the team was that is a minor issue.

The Sabres allowed 47 shots against, allowed an unassisted powerplay goal, and took advantage of none of their own powerplay opportunities.

Official Three Stars

Cam Ward

Eric Staal

Patrick Lalime

My Three Stars

Eric Staal (one goal, two assists, seven shots)

Cam Ward (shutout, 36 saves)

Patrick Lalime (28 saves)

Outworked by Chicago

As the Sabres took on my favorite team in the West, they got off to a good start with an early goal by Kotalik. However poor goaltending and an inability to produce on the powerplay cost Buffalo the game.

Lalime looked very bad in net, and allowed a number of goals by him that he really shouldn't have. While he is the second string guy, this should have been a winnable game for the Sabres and letting in that many soft goals ruined the chances for the team.

Not that the rest of the Sabres were playing all that well either. With the notable exceptions of Henrik Tallinder, and Tim Connolly nobody was willing to shoot the puck. The Sabres were given a six minute powerplay (which is weird in and of itself), but were only able to generate a single shot on net during that entire stretch. While Chicago does have one of the better penalty kill units in the league, that is no excuse for Buffalo to do that poorly.

The game was full of fights and confrontations usually surrounding Gaustad and Stafford. The goose actually had a pretty good game, disrupting the Blackhawks flow and finishing the night plus one with two shots on net.

Instead of the high flying Blackhawks the Sabres get to play the struggling Stars on Thursday night. Hopefully that is enough of a chance that they can actually take advantage of it.

Official Three Stars

Cristobal Huet

Jonathan Toews

Matt Walker

My Three Stars

Jonathan Toews (one goal, one assist, plus two)

Martin Havlat (one goal, plus one)

Ales Kotalik (one goal, plus one in the loss)

Sabres get rolled over

This was not a good game for Buffalo. They got destroyed by the Columbus Blue Jackets in every aspect of the game. Technically the Sabres did outshoot their opponents 37-25, but in no way did they control this game. Time after time the team failed to come back on defense, and put in little effort on their own rushes.

The RJ Umberger scored two goals in the game. The Blue Jackets also got goals from former Sabres captain Michael Peca, and another goal from Rick Nash.

Buffalo didn't look well, with the somewhat injured Tim Connolly and Paul Gaustad being the only Sabres giving any effort in this game. Despite the small sample size it is no mistake that Connolly is one of the NHL's top defensive forwards. A few of the goals were directly the result of Roy not having any backcheck at all.

Patrick Lalime may be in trouble as the teams dependable backup. While the first goal was clearly not his fault, the fourth goal certainly was. Also allowing six goals against in only 45 minutes on ice is never good. Buffalo will be in trouble, if once again they can not trust their backup to take any starts.

Saturday night's game is against the Penguins, who are pretty good. Buffalo is going to have to turn things around fast.

Official Three Stars

Pascal Leclaire

RJ Umberger

Manny Malhotra

My Three Stars

RJ Umberger (two goals)

Mike Commodore (two assists, plus three)

Pascal Leclaire (36 saves on 37 shots)

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)

A shootout loss to the Thrashers

The Buffalo Sabres had their first loss of the season to the Atlanta Thrashers in a shootout. Patrick Lalime was in goal for Buffalo, who feel behind early, but played better in the later periods to tie the game up.

Thomas Vanek had yet another goal, to give him his seventh of the season just five games in. Buffalo remained strong on special teams as Vanek's goal came five on three, while Buffalo continued to be able to kill off all their penalties.

In the shootout Kotalik didn't go with his normal backhander and failed to score. Stafford did and Vanek continued to do poorly in the shootout like he has for his whole career. Ilya Kovalchuk and Vyacheslav Kozlov scored in the shootout for Atlanta.

Official Three Stars

Kari Lehtonen

Patrick Lalime

Ilya Kovalchuk

My Three Stars

Ilya Kovalchuk (one goal, plus another in the shootout)

Todd White (two assists, plus two)

Jason Pominville (one goal, one assist)

Buffalo beats down on the Islanders

Buffalo beat down on the Islanders by a score of 7-1. New York played its second straight game without all-star goalie Rick DiPietro who has been having knee problems. Buffalo however also played their back up goaltender Patrick Lalime for his first game in Buffalo.

The game had 150 minutes worth of penalties with Rivet and Kaleta each getting two game misconducts and Bergenheim, Witt and Thompson earning game misconducts for the Islanders.

Buffalo looked good on the powerplay this game, scoring three times with the man advantage. The penalty kill allowed one goal against, but also scored a shorthander.

Hecht left the game early with an injury and will likely be out for a couple of games. Staffard also was limping a bit towards the end of the game, while Connolly was still out. The scoring in the game was fairly evenly distributed, but Vanek scored two putting him on pace for 123 for the season. At the very least he should not have the slow start that he had last season. Both Kotalik and Pominville had a goal and two assists.

Official Three Stars

Thomas Vanek

Jason Pominville

Ales Kotalik

My Three Stars

Thomas Vanek (two goals)

Ales Kotalik (a goal and two assists)

Patrick LaLime (only one goal against)

Questions for the comming season

The Sabres play their first pre-season game of the year tonight, but still face alot of questions coming into this season. The answers to these questions will determine if Buffalo can win this year or not.

Can Vanek play defense? - two years ago Vanek lead the league with a plus 47 rating. Last year, despite only a slight drop in goal scoring he was minus five. He needs to go back to playing two ways if the Sabres are going to have a chance this year.

Can Connolly stay healthy? - Tim Connolly has only played in 50 games the past two seasons combined. He is a good player, but is off the ice far too often to be considered the cornerstone of this team.

Will Peters use up a roster spot? - Even when he is on the roster Peters only rarely gets more than five minutes of playing time a game. Given Buffalo's depth on offense that is a spot that would be better filled by Kaleta or Gerbe.

Is Sekera for real? - Andrej Sekera has been penciled in as a top six defenseman this season off of only 37 games played last season. In a similar position Paetsch disappointed last year. Granted Mike Weber may be capable of taking this spot as well.

Will Max show up big in his contract year? - there has been some talk about trading Afinogenov this off season, but just three seasons ago he lead the team in points. Last year was a disappointment for him, but does the possibility of him turning his game around still exist?

Can Lalime get enough starts to give Miller some rest? - It was clear that the team did not trust their backup goalie last season, forcing them to play Miller every game. Given how he did last year in Chicago Lalime should be trusted to take a few games.

A new backup goaltender

For all the hype going into the start of free agency, the Sabres only managed to sign a back up goaltender, and while it was something that needed to be done it was less then spectacular. That said we still got a few months till the season starts to make a few more moves.

So we signed Patrick Lalime to a two year, one million a year contract to be the back up to Ryan Miller. I watched a number of Chicago games last year where Lalime got a good number of starts due to injuries to Khabibulin. As such I'm not to confident about Lalime, as whenever he was in net I was always a little more worried, and wondering when Khabibulin would get healthy again. All in all, I guess he looked a little shakey. However taking a more objective approach and just looking at the numbers, Lalime went 16-12-2 despite playing for a team that failed to make the playoffs. As such, perhaps he isn't that bad, and the games I happened to watch were just his off days.

I would have preferred to sign Andrew Raycroft or Curtis Joseph, but they have both already signed elsewhere.

Well the Sabres still have a hole to fill at defense, both Teppo Numminen and Brooks Orpik are still unsigned. However the rumors about Orpik are not good.