Sabres not looking so good this weekend

The Sabres escaped this weekend with a 1-1 record, and are still among the best teams in the NHL with a 8-2-1 record. Still they didn't look all that great in their past two games against somewhat weak teams.

The Toronto Maple Leafs who only have one win to their name so far this season forced the Sabres to go to overtime on Friday. A second goal in that game by Tim Connolly earned Buffalo the win, but the game was still far closer than it ever should have been.

On Saturday the Sabres then got blown out 5-0 by the New York Islanders of all teams. While they did have former Buffalo goalie Marty Biron in net, the Sabres need to play better against what are the league's weaker teams. Buffalo is starting to show the same mistake of losing the easy games that cost them a playoff spot last season. Hopefully there is still time for them to turn things around.

Still better than Toronto

The Sabres have showed that they have yet to bottom out completely, as they solidly beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-1. As a result the team is still mathematically in it. As they say, as long as their is life, there is hope. So as long as Buffalo wins their two remaining games, and the Rangers and Panthers both lose both of theirs, then the Sabres are back in the playoffs this season. Not likely, but possible.

The team finally got some solid play from Pominville who had two point and six shots in the game. Gaustad and Vanek came through as usual and score the other two goals.

Buffalo was actually outshot in this game 33-29 but got good play from Miller who has been wearing a new helmet the last handful of games.

Thursday night has three of the games that Buffalo needs to go their way. The Sabres, Flyers, and Thrashers all have to win or else that 2.1% drops to zero.

Official Three Stars

Ryan Miller

Nikolai Kulemin

Jason Pominville

My Three Stars

Jason Pominville (one goal, one assist, six shots)

Paul Gaustad (one goal)

Ryan Miller (32 saves, only one goal against)

Sabres stay alive with Win

The Sabres continued to pretend that they have a shot at the playoffs with a win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Friday night. Ryan Miller returned in goal for Buffalo, but the real reason for the win was the return of Jochen Hecht who has all but disappeared this season. Hecht got the first goal in the game only 37 seconds in starting what would amount to a 4-0 lead. Hecht would later add an assist on the final goal of the game.

Of course Buffalo almost blew their 4-0 lead, but a third period goal by Paul Gaustad allowed the Sabres to hold onto for a 5-3 win. Toronto actually played ok, outshooting Buffalo 36-24, but saw Curtis Joseph allow four goals on just nine shots.

Official Three Stars

Tim Connolly

Paul Gaustad

Chris Butler

My Three Stars

Tim Connolly (two goals, plus two, four shots)

Paul Gaustad (one goal, one assist)

Matt Stajan (one goal, one assist, plus two, 71% on faceoffs)

A Solid Win against the Leafs

The Sabres won a 4-1 game against the Maple Leafs on Tuesday night, but still looked a bit shaky at times.

While the game was pretty well decided after the Sabres ended the first period with a 3-0 lead, things did not go perfect. Two of the goals were a bit soft and Justin Pogge did not play great in what was only his third NHL start ever. Also the Sabres were outworked in the first ten minutes of the game, and allowed a powerplay goal against, when just a month ago, the penalty kill was a highlight for this team.

Stafford played well scoring two powerplay goals, while the team also got bailed out by Miller most of the night. Ellis also had a good game filling in the role traditionally done by Gaustad.

Pominville had one of his goals discounted after it bounced off of his chest. The goal should have been good, but the game was pretty well decided by that point anyhow. Buffalo beat a team that they were supposed to, while Carolina lost giving the Sabres a bit more separation.

Official Three Stars

Ryan Miller

Drew Stafford

Niklas Hagman

My Three Stars

Ryan Miller (27 saves, .964SV%)

Drew Stafford (two goals)

Daniel Paille (one goal, one assist, three shots, plus two)

A Disappointing Loss

The Sabres were the better team in this game, and should have found a way to win. Instead they repeatedly failed to hit the back of the net and ended up losing to the Toronto Maple Leafs 2-1.

The Sabres controlled most of the game, but missed many good chances. Stafford had a wide open net that he was unable to hit, Afinogenov had two great opportunities that he put straight into the goalie's pads, and Vanek was unable to even get the puck on net half of the time. Buffalo's lone goal came from Lydman who scored for the first time all season.

Pominville had six shots on net, and Gerbe, Roy, and Stafford all ended up as plus one on the night. Still they need more offense if they wanted to win. Both of Toronto's goals came on very nice shots, but given the chances that Buffalo had they have nobody to blame for this loss but themselves.

Official Three Stars

Vesa Toskala

Mikhail Grabovski

Lee Stempniak

My Three Stars

Lee Stempniak (one assist, plus two)

Toni Lydman (one goal, plus one in the loss)

Jeremy Williams (one goal, three shots)

Lee Stempniak now in Toronto

West Seneca native Lee Stempniak has been traded from the St. Louis Blues to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Toronto gave up Carlo Colaiacovo and Alex Steen in the trade.

As a result Stempniak will now play against the Sabres far more often. Buffalo already played against him once this season when Buffalo beat the Blues. In the game Lee Stempniak did play well, earning himself a goal and an assist.

He played well for the Blues, even scoring an overtime game wining goal in his final game with the Blues. He is expected to receive a starting role for the Leafs, playing on the top line and the powerplay, and should see his stats improve as a result.

Also assuming that he doesn't get injured Stempniak will be in the unique position of playing versus the Sabres for seven games this season.

Northeast Division

The northeast has been one of the toughest divisions since the lockout, but the competition is beginning to level out. Neither Ottawa nor Buffalo are as dominate as they used to be, and Montreal and Boston have improved into playoff contenders.

#1 Montreal Canadians
They took second in the division last year, and have mostly brought back the same team. Their most notable addition is Robert Lang who they picked up from Chicago, and will give them some additional offense. The main downside for this team is that Price is still rather unproven in goal, and could go either way.

#2 Buffalo Sabres
Buffalo missed the playoffs last year, but should make it this season. Their main weakness was on defense, but they have shored up that position with the addition of Rivet and the return of Numminen. Buffalo also has the division's best goaltender in Ryan Miller.

#3 Ottawa Senators
Ottawa won the division last year, but fell apart at the end of the season and then got swept out of the playoffs in the first round. The team has some talent, but there is no reason to think that they will recover from their collapse and are unlikely to make the postseason.

#4 Boston Bruins
Boston is a bit of a question mark as they have the possibility of easily making the playoffs, and also finish near dead last. The team has some big name players, but lacks the depth to be a top of the league team. Goaltending is also a huge question mark for this team as it could end up being anywhere from amazing to awful.

#5 Toronto Maple Leafs
Toronto has been having a very tough time getting things together since the lockout and this season doesn't look any more promising for them. They have no consistent scoring, and only mediocre defense. They surprisingly upset the defending champion Detroit Red Wings in their season opener, but that is not how the entire season is going to go for this team.

Mats Sundin and the Long Offseason

There has been a lot of question over where Mats Sundin will sign during this off season. However, there is no guarantee that he will be playing at all this coming season. While he still is able to play if he wants to, there is little reason to believe that he does. While there has been no official word on his retirement, he has been rather quiet this off season, and well there are many teams that would love to sign him nobody knows exactly what to expect.

One of the leading candidates to sign Sundin are the Vancouver Canucks. At the start of free agency on July 1st, Mats Sundin turned down a contract offer from them. The Montreal Canadian's are another leading contender, but nothing has happened there either.

One of the issues, may be Sundin's die hard loyalty to the Toronto Maple Leafs. He has played his entire career with the team, and really doesn't want to leave. Last season when he was asked to waive his no trade clause, he refused, despite being in the final year of his contract, and with a team that clearly had no shot at making the post-season. However, going back to the trade Toronto has made it rather clear that they don't really intend to bring back Sundin for another season, and are surely not offering him another no trade clause.

Still the Maple Leafs refusal to bring back Sundin for another season is puzzling. Well I can understand why they may not want him on a long term contract, there is no reason not to sign him for one more year. Toronto currently has a young and weak team, that has very little chance at making the playoffs. At least bringing Sundin back would give them some credibility even if it won't improve the teams chances too much. In the end it is a bit pointless to watch your best player wander off without trying to keep him.

With these limited options Sundin may very well just retire this offseason. There are teams that would love to have him, but if he doesn't feel like continuing his career there is no reason he should feel forced to. Well Mats is smart to take his time and weigh his options before rushing into retirement (see Favre), the end result is that Sundin will not be playing this coming season. At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with that.

Hanging on through the shootout

The Sabres made it through one more game, and are still mathematically in this. With the teams shootout win over Toronto, the Sabres could still finish as high as seventh.

The Maple Leafs were a team that Buffalo was supposed to beat, and while they did, it was ugly. Miller played very poorly and let in two easy goals. On the games second goal, he was a good five feet out of position, and couldn't make the save despite the puck directly hitting his glove. Lets put Gaustad in net, at least we know that he would try.

Still with good play from Roy and Sekera and a very lucky goal by Bernier the Sabre managed to tie the game in regulation, and move onto a shootout. Bernier has been very quiet since his debut, but managed to stuff the puck across the line on a very broken play that had to be reviewed. Sekera continued to impress as Vanek's game tying goal was a deflection of the defensemen's shot.

The shootout went a full six rounds, but Buffalo looked pretty good. Kotalik finally went back to the move that worked so well for him last season, and scored. If he had been doing that all year, we might not have needed this win so badly. Although he didn't score Pominville had a pretty good shot, as did Vanek (for a change). Roy got robbed on his shot, and Afinogenov's was a very pretty goal. On the other side of the ice to his credit Miller played pretty well. After letting in the first shot, he stayed back a bit more, and saved the next five straight.

The Sabres next must win game is Thursday at Montreal, but they need some help Wednesday night from the Devils and the Penguins first. The Capitals won last night, which really doesn't help either.

Official Three Stars

Derek Roy

Anton Stralman

Ryan Miller

My Three Stars

Maxim Afinogenov (one assist, plus shootout goal)

Tomas Kaberle (one goal, plus two in the loss)

Derek Roy (one goal, 60% on faceoffs)

No Comeback

The Sabres were not able to make the big comeback that was needed, this time, and lost to the Tornonto Maple Leafs 4-1. The Sabres have gone from scoring 20 goals in their last three games, to scoring 21 goals in their last four. Point is Toronto should have been an easy win, and by not picking up the W Buffalo is making things hard on itself.

The Sabres did score their one goal on the powerplay, but failed to score on three chances with a two man advantage that combined for a total just shy of three minutes. Toronto was taking tons of penalties, even bad ones like "unsportsmanlike conduct" and "too many men on the ice", but Buffalo failed to take ahold of those oppertunites to win the game.

Vesa Toskala, who in just the past week let in a shorthanded goal from the far end of the ice, showed up big in this game. Toskala may have been the reason Toronto won, as the Sabres actually finished the game with more shots.

Official Three Stars

Vesa Toskala

Matthew Stajan

Anton Stralman

My Three Stars

Vesa Toskala (35 saves, only one goal against)

Anton Stralman (goal, two points, plus three)

Jason Blake (goal, two points, plus two)

The Captains carry

The Sabres continued their playoff hopes by beating the Maple Leafs 6-2. This win actually looked a lot like the Sabres last.

Captains Jason Pominville and Jochen Hecht were both plus three with three points. Also Paille continued his current streak and scored yet another goal. Drew Stafford also had a good game, ending plus two with a goal that was set up by Kaleta.

The Sabres didn't get much help though as the two teams ahead of them ended up with a three point game. However they are now only one point out of eighth place (although they currently don't have the tie breaker).

Official Three Stars

Jason Pominville

Jochan Hecht

Paul Kubina

My Three Stars

Jason Pominville (one goal, two assists, plus three)

Jochan Hecht (one goal, two assists, plus three)

Paul Gaustad (two assists, plus two)

Help from the Leafs

The Leafs are Buffalo's best bet to making the post season. The Sabres still have three more games against this team, which will hopefully supply some much needed easy wins. In fact these are pretty much the only easy games that Buffalo has left on it's schedule.

Furthermore the Leafs beat Philly last night (although in overtime), and play them again tonight. For the Flyers to keep racking up the losses is just as important for the Sabres to keep winning.

Buffalo plays tonight against the Penguins. Mike Weber will be in the line up from Rochester, but far more importantly Tallinder will be back. As long as we play Lydman and Tallinder all game long, we can almost guarantee a win.

Blowing away the Leafs

Why does everyone always use a metaphor in their headlines about Leafs games? Regardless the Leafs did get blown away by the Sabres as they picked up their second straight win 5-1. The short version is that the Sabres outplayed the Leafs in every aspect of the game, (although Toronto did outshoot the Sabres 35-23).

The most impressive part of this win has to be the fact that the Sabres actually played decent on the powerplay. The Sabres haven't had much of an advantage being a man up this season, but earned themselves two goals on six chances. While the one goal the Sabres did allow was on a Toronto powerplay, it was more the result of a major mental mistake, then a result of being a man down. Still they killed off the rest of their shorthanded situations well, and came away with the win.

Tim Connolly didn't play in the game which is a bit worrisome, and was replaced by defenceman Nathan Paetsch who played up front the whole game. He was a respectable plus one, but only got 1:40 of ice time.

Official Three Stars

Thomas Vanek

Ryan Miller

Brian Campbell

My Three Stars

Thomas Vanek (one goal, two assists, three points)

Ales Kotalik (two goals)

Adam Mair (one assist, plus one, 6-0 on faceoffs)

Sabres win goaltending battle

The Buffalo Sabres beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 1-0 in a game where the two goaltenders had far more impact on the game than the position players on the ice did.

For the games 51 first minutes neither team was able to score. Both sides were getting a good share of chances, but both Ryan Miller and Vesa Toskala came up big for their teams and didn't let anything by. Toskala ended the game with 19 saves (.950 SV%) while Miller saved all 35 shots that came his way.

The game's lone goal finally came when Danial Paille made a few cut backs behind the net, before finding Paul Gaustad wide open at the side of the net. Gaustad then knocked the puck off the side of the goalie and in.

The Sabres actually got outshot, and owe alot of this win the Miller. Ryan has been playing great in goal all month, and has only allowed more than two goals once, since January 19th.

For some reason, they only picked two stars for this game instead of the usual three, while not even going for obvious picks such as the games only goal scorer, or the second really really good goalie in this game. The Sabres have off until an afternoon game against the Rangers on Saturday.

Official Three Stars

Ryan Miller

Daniel Paille

My Three Stars

Ryan Miller (for the shutout)

Paul Gaustad (the game's only goal)

Vesa Toskala (only let one past him)

Sabres win streak ends short as they lose to the Leafs

The Sabres dropped yet another game this year as they lost to the leafs 4-2. The Sabres got off to a slow start giving up two early powerplay goals and could never make it back into the game.

Official Three Stars

Alexander Steen

Jochen Hecht

Jason Blake

My Three Stars

Jason Blake (goal to seal the win)

Hall Gill (one assist, plus two)

Jochen Hecht (one goal, plus one)

Sabres Fail to Score (yet again)

If you score zero goals, you are guaranteed to lose. The Sabres actually looked like the better team through the first two periods, but were unable to score, which makes it all for nothing. Then to top it off they played horribly in the third. Toronto really didn't play that well either, but at least they tried, and didn't have a goal tender who let in random easy shots...

The Sabres really just need to shoot the puck. They had three or four breakaways (two by Vanek), where they never even got a shot off. Same with the powerplays, they just dump it into the corner, and lose possession half the time, rather than get a shot on net. Further more on the powerplay, the shots should all be on the net, and not high or wide. There is no reason to be trying to pick the corner, as the goals are eventually going to come off of rebounds or tipped shots anyways.

If the Sabres can't beat Toronto they are going to have some real problems with Montreal and Ottawa...

Official Three Stars

Andrew Raycroft

Matts Sundin

Brian McCabe

My Three Stars

Andrew Raycroft (the shutout)

Matts Sundin (one goal, one assist)

(this game only had two stars...)

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)

The Season Starts

Buffalo is one of the last teams have it's season opener tonight, when they play the New York Islanders. Kotalik is still not expected to play in either game this weekend, but the Sabres should be favorites to win both matches.

Elsewhere the Ducks have already played three games this season, and have come out with a win, a loss, and an OT/SO loss. One tally in each category to start the season, and not looking as good as they did last year already.

The Senators are the league leaders in the early going, after twice beating the Toronto Maple Leafs. As long as the Sabres can sweep the leafs themselves, this really shouldn't put Buffalo back in the standings any.

Second year forward Paul Stastny who should have won the Calder last year, had a hat-trick in the Avalanche's season opener against Dallas, but saw his team shutout yesterday against Nashville.

Buffalo's former captains are getting off to a fast start this season. Briere has already scored twice for Philadelphia, and Drury has a game winner for the Rangers.

Roy and the Sabres crush Toronto

Ok, so it's still preseason, but seeing a 7 - 2 victory is still fun. The final 3 goals of the night all came from Derek Roy, who also had three assists on the earlier goals, not a bad day at all. Vanek also did decent with a goal and three assists.

The powerplay was a mixed bag. Buffalo scored twice with a two man advantage, and killed all three of their penalties. However, they allowed two shorthanded goals, although Roy would get a short handed goal himself towards the end of the game. Glad to see them successfully kill the penalties, but on the power play they still need some work...

The role of captain continued to rotate around as Lydman was captain with Tallinder and Hecht as the alternates...

Next preseason game is Friday down in Pittsburgh...