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andrewuttaro · 4 years

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New Look Sabres: GM 35 - TOR - WHY NOT?

5-3 Regulation Loss

This is a confluence of events that gets you thinking about what kind of Sports City Buffalo is. The Buffalo Bills just locked up their first ten-win season since the year the Buffalo Sabres were last in the Stanley Cup Final. That sealed a playoff appearance this NFL season, the second such appearance this century. The last team the Sabres overcame to go to that 1999 Stanley Cup Final is none other than the Toronto Maple Leafs. Time is a flat circle but this all still feels very new. Buffalo has supported their teams loyally through thick and thin but mostly thin. Times like these feel like the reward. I’m not saying the Buffalo Sabres are due to go to the Stanley Cup Final but us holding the fort through this beyond shitty decade of hockey deserves some catharsis too. Spare a moment to think about how Buffalo is often regarded as a City free agents don’t want to come to. It feels bad but look at the Taylor Hall trade. New Jersey had him, got an MVP season out of him, but has now ultimately lost him. There are far fewer guys in Sabres history who were here for a short time and left. Yeah, there’s Drury, Briere and a handful of others but we don’t suffer from the same things the big popular cities suffer from. In those big markets you don’t have the attachment. They just leave whenever the contracts don’t line up. Sure that happens everywhere, but certainly a lot less in the frozen hellscapes nobody wants to visit like Buffalo. Just food for thought I guess. In the bigger, richer frozen hellscape up the highway, the new Toronto Maple Leafs, the Big Four Leafs if you will, have been good for nearly four years now. That’s begun to feel normal but in spite of that seeming inevitability it is the Sabres who are higher in the standings today. A rough start preceding a Head Coaching change still holds back the team everyone though was a Stanley Cup contender before the season began. National TV and the good taste of Sunday Night Football in our mouths this game was tantalizing opportunity.

Despite a high forechecking start for the visitors the Leafs struck first. Fredrik Gauthier benefited from a Brandon Montour turnover and ripped off a quick one past Linus Ullmark. In spite of the early 1-0 lead for the Leafs, Buffalo continued with an aggressive attack and very rarely too far away from the puck. The problem is they didn’t get many shots on goal, only five total for the whole first period. Most of the Sabres shots were after the twelve-minute mark. New Toronto Maple Leafs Coach Sheldon Keefe played around with line matchups and started juggling the Auston Matthews line away from the Eichel line. That and floating an extra winger seemed to get Buffalo lodged in their zone for uncomfortably long periods of time. Linus Ullmark had a lot of work in the first period. He was dancing with the best of them and robbed John Tavares before robbing Tyson Barrie. Like when I say robbed, Barrie’s jaw literally dropped. Ideally though you want to be the team taking the shots, not the one needing your goalie to have a big night. In the first period the Leafs were the ones shooting. The second period went… well worse. What do you call a horny white dude with a streak of hair on his upper lip? A 1970s pornstar… No: Auston Matthew. His scoring streak was done and the best porn stache Glendale, Arizona has seen in decades decided to whip it out when Jack Eichel is in the house!

A frantic zone entry preceded Morgan Rielly shooting a quick assist over to Matthews who fired it quicker than Ullmark could get over, 2-0 Leafs. What followed afterward for Buffalo was not the best hockey. Uh, no sir, the shooting was better than the first period by purely a shots on goal metric, but something just wasn’t clicking. In some respects the visitors just kind of… well flailed. There was a decent two-on-rush the Sabres got, that mind you was Conor Sheary and Jimmy Vesey, that just stopped dead in its tracks for no reason. Sheary just stopped to dead to play target practice. He did not aim well. When Auston Matthews scored the second time it was a rush done properly and a defensive scheme from Buffalo that just saw nobody try to stop anyone from doing anything. Rasmus Dahlin was in the net behind Ullmark like he didn’t know where to go! 3-0 Leafs and I got to say this was the first time since mid-November it looked like this team was down on itself. Ralph Krueger must have said what the astute observer of the NHL was thinking in the second intermission: this isn’t 2017, y’all have no reason to get down on yourselves playing THIS Leafs team. Stop it. Buck up and go get em. Go get em they did.

If you have a cursory understanding of the Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey Club you may know they just love throwing away leads. Funny thing in this season of giving is that the Buffalo Sabres Hockey Club loves late game comebacks. The Sabres won the Thanksgiving Playoffs last year doing it! The carry over from a John Tavares holding penalty from the last period gave the Sabres the man advantage in the early going and they took some momentum from it. Jack Eichel sets up Dahlin at the point and he launches one all the way home past Fredrik Andersen. Buffalo is on the board down 3-1 now and you better watch out because when the Sabres score powerplay goals they play with reckless abandon. Suddenly this game was a track meet back and forth. On one of those crazy rushes Dmytro Timashov beat Ullmark short side to extend the Leafs lead 4-1. A couple plays later Toronto almost scores and the puck is quickly rotated out of the defensive zone to Eichel already off down the ice in the opposite direction outrunning Justin Holl. Eichel puts it top shelf because FUCK Toronto! Get out of the way of my fucking yuletide spirit! Technically Eichel’s point streak was already continued by an assist on the Dahlin goal but yummy yummy in my tummy, give me banger against the Leafs, thanks Jack! The crazy pace did slow down a little after that unfortunately. I’ll be honest, it’s been a crazy week for my wife and I, so we were eyes deep in Kate McKinnon impressions at this point. Nonetheless the look of a comeback was brewing.

Kyle Okposo scored a rebound tap in sneaky shit and suddenly it’s a one goal game 4-3 with a little over five minutes left in regulation! Steve Dangle’s heart doctor isn’t going to like the look of this one at the next appointment! When Okposo scores it triggers one or both of two things: toxic hockey bros’ tweets about his concussion history or a big dick goal scoring streaks in comeback games. In this case it was both. The Sabres laid it on thick like some warm Canadian maple syrup at a holiday breakfast. I could hear the suburban hockey dads gently whisper “grind it out” into the crisp winter air like angels getting their wings. Unfortunately it was just not to be tonight in the center of the universe. After Ullmark was pulled all it took was one poor pass by Marcus Johansson to spring Ilya Mikheyev on the empty netter insurance goal. That was basically it and this one ended 5-3 in regulation. Those are the worst kind of losses: the ones in regulation… against the Leafs. Wah wah. That was all she wrote. Unlike Saturday’s overtime loss to the Islanders, a loss you almost get up out of your chair at home and clap for, last night’s loss was just… bleh. A regular grinch who stole Christmas.

Now the totally understandable surge of tweets begging for the reunion of Jack and Jeff that unfolded after this game felt like they were forgetting Victor Olofsson. I suppose we do need to see what he can do without Jack centering his line for a prolonged sample size, sure. But that’s not really what you might be apt to take coming out of this game. Like we’ve felt since before fucking Memorial Day: a trade is due here. One top six winger pushes this team to a place where they have some sustainability on the scoring front. This trade has to happen. I would hate it being for a center at this point though those are harder to get! Johansson has done a fine job in the 2C role, but we all know eventually he has to go back to wing, right? We sent Casey Mittelstadt down to Rochester. Johansson was visibly struggling in this game and its hard not to see how that contributed to his game-ending mistake. One more guy, Jason. I know you got some deals on deck. Take them off the back-burner and do them now. Give us a Christmas present. Even with this loss the Sabres are in a divisional playoff spot ahead of the Leafs. Perhaps the Sabres are higher up on the pecking order than they deserve but how about not? Why not this team? Why not go for the playoffs this year? I know you have a long-range plan looking toward the summer, Jason, but come on, these guys can make the playoffs with just a tiny bit more help. At this rate Jack might just drag them there; don’t make him do that. Send in reinforcements.

Now off to a Philadelphia Flyers team flying high on Gritty’s white dust tomorrow. Sure, that looks like a tough game but allow me to introduce you to a new thought. Us Sabres fans are always waiting for the wheels to come off. We look for it and when it happens we feel satisfied in that we predicted it would happen with the same old Sabres. But what if there was another question fans could ask that was less negative all the time. Here’s a clue: I’ve already asked it in this postgame. Instead of predicting how the wheels will come off here’s a new question to ask: WHY NOT? It’s better shouted than spoken. WHY NOT? Why not this team this season? Why not playoffs? Why not us? We’ve learned to ask this question with the Buffalo Bills this season as they’ve put together a nice record and made their playoffs. Let’s start asking it with the Sabres. Why not the Buffalo Sabres? Why not us? Well, how about you like, share and comment on this blog. The Bills making the playoffs give the Sabres a little cover for now. We’re a bit less grumpy about a loss to the Leafs than we normally would be, eh? I’m here for it. Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. Tre White using his alma mater slot to say “Tre White Goalie Academy” has to put a smile on Carter Hutton’s face, right? Don’t we think Hutton could use some smiles these days?

#buffalo sabres #hockey #blog #NHL #Toronto Maple Leafs

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andrewuttaro · 5 years

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New Look Sabres: GM 48 - VAN - Worthy

The first meeting with the Buffalo Sabres’ 1970 expansion buddies came in the early days of the ten game win streak (the second game of it in fact) and Vancouver made us fire up the comeback machine. I told myself I would stop bringing up the ten game banger, its dead and buried, but gee if this game is the second in a streak half as good as that then we could be turning this ship around at just the right time. Any results on that front will have to wait a freezing cold Western New York week as this end of the Western Canada road trip is the last game for the Sabres for 11 days. It’s a bye-week on top of an All-Star break so it won’t be a great stretch without hockey, just this specific kind of it. It’s hard deciding if I’m happy for this break from the Sabres considering how bad they’ve been or if it frustrates me. For the sake of my mental health I’ll choose the first option. On the bright side of how bad it’s been lately it maybe priming the pump for a trade or two. I wouldn’t hold your breath but at this point no one is really sure what will create some consistency in this team. I tend to pull for the turn coming from the guys in the room and perhaps we’re seeing the beginning of some change from within. You got to be encouraged by this game and the last as a pair: both were complete efforts, both had a lot of battle and the only difference really is finding that third period mojo. This game had potential to be a fun win for Buffalo just like Wednesday night in Calgary but the cookie just didn’t crumble that way. This 4-3 is a happy 4-3 loss considering how they played but the Western Canada road trip earns a measly 2 points in the standings which squarely puts it in the failed road trip category for my acceptability scale. Not good enough but this game was a bounce or two away from being a different story.

The opening period was bizarre, like frighteningly so. The Canucks must have not realized they were playing yet because they did not get a proper shot on goal until past the halfway mark of the period. The Sabres dominated play for the first 11 minutes including a tap in goal by Evan Rodrigues to officially place him in a category of hot players as getting a goal in three straight games. He must like Western Canada! He’s from Toronto? Well that’s definitely not the case. It was a bizarre play and he only barely got his stick on the puck after it haphazardly bounced off Rasmus Ristolainen’s skate. The real bizarre thing about this period is that even after the home team turns it on and scores two goals via Alexander Edler and Sven Baertschi the place is still damn near silent; I’m not kidding you could hear the players yelling to each other. The 100 level at least was full there so I was beginning to wonder if I had been drugged. Linus Ullmark in net for the Sabres was not drugged; in fact his game was pretty good facing former AHL North Division rival goalie Thatcher Demko in the Vancouver net. He was screened for the Edler goal and there was not much more he could’ve done except scold the defense for the Baertschi goal. That goal was not ok: it was everything hockey teachers tell you not to do defensively namely puck watching. Every Sabre had their back facing the guy who got the quick pass and put it in. Ullmark was left out to dry.

The second period was a little less bizarre as the crowd got louder. I can only tell from the highlights because I fell asleep before the middle period began and woke after it. My wife and I took care of our sick older cat quite a bit yesterday and perhaps it stands to logic I was actually tired. When I did wake I wasn’t cognizant enough to really mount an effort to watch the post-midnight third period. Those choices were good for my health but unfortunate for my Sabres fanhood because the second period at least was probably the Sabres best period. After coming out stronger in this go at it, Kyle Okposo got the puck off of Johan Larsson (who continues to have good fourth line games) and drove in on Demko, shot high and scored. That goal was unlike the chances the Sabres were starting to get in this game. The strategy that won the Sabres many games in the first half were net-crashing plays was going and there was a notable decrease in frustrating, unhelpful drop passes and dump-and-chases in this game. Thatcher Demko is probably the guy in net for Vancouver for years to come because he was always the talk of the division in the AHL and he must proved his NHL worthiness in this game if he hasn’t already. He stopped two incredible opportunities from Jeff Skinner and Rasmus Dahlin in the course of 2 minutes in this middle frame. Jeff Skinner and Jake Virtanen got into a little disagreement because we know how Skinner talks shit and then it was 4-on-4 hockey for a goal by the Vancouver wonder-kid not named Elias as Brock Boeser got a puck from Bo Horvat that Horvat had so gracefully received from Sabre Lawrence Pilut in the corner and tapped it past Linus Ullmark still calibrating for a Horvat shot. Vancouver was in the lead again in spite of continuing to look out-skated by the visitors. Sam Reinhart, born and raised in Vancouver actually, got his a few minutes later when Jack Eichel got into the zone and initiated a tape-to-tape series of passes that went through Conor Sheary and eventually got the puck to Reinhart alone in front who put it in high on Demko. It would remain 3-3 going into the third period.

The Sabres did not fall asleep for the third like I decided to. They pushed pretty heavily (not scoring on the powerplay which is the greatest failure of this team right now) outshooting the home team by ten and dominating in that way like they did for most of the first. The problem is only goals matter and the Canucks got one in this period. After hardly 5 seconds in the O-zone for his team Jay Beagle, yes that Jay Beagle, got the puck to Josh Leivo, yes that Josh Leivo, who got the puck to Loui Eriksson (I know isn’t this goal is just a wild blast from the past of our Eastern Conference enemies) who fired high past Ullmark hanging perhaps the only goal you can blame on the goalie on Linus. Dumb luck! Friggin dumb luck that for all the opportunities the Sabres got in this third period, ten more than the Canucks (!), that that one goes for the other guys! The Sabres continued fighting, right down to the final buzzer they were throwing everything at Demko but this one ends 4-3 in regulation. That was a game the Sabres deserved at least a point and they were denied by a Canucks team that just found a way to win. Yea, the Canucks haven’t been too hot lately either but I think you’re missing the point of this one ragging on Pilut or Ullmark. This game was a real stick breaker and the Canucks got the points to get themselves back into a Western Conference wildcard as the Sabres stare down a break they’ll certainly fall further out of the Eastern Conference picture during. Perhaps you take the positives of how you played into the break preparing for a week from Tuesday but gee, this is a frustrating loss. It shows the Sabres are worthy of better results but didn’t give them one. Enjoy the snowstorm I guess?

At the posting of this blog post the Sabres sit 4 points back of the last wildcard spot held by… Pittsburgh? Ok. Pittsburgh, Montreal and Boston have 1 game left before the Sabres play again except the Penguins who have two. Worst case scenario the last playoff spot is 8 points away by the time Buffalo visits Columbus. That gap will not grow much larger than that. Montreal and Boston have been on wicked tears that will slow up and the only reason I didn’t include the Islanders like I would earlier in the week is because they shot to the top of the upside down world known as the Metropolitan division. The playoffs have not gotten out of reach yet and the Sabres come back from this break into the home stretch of the season that will not see more than three nights off until they’ve either clinched a spot or been mathematically eliminated. The stretch run will be the moment of truth for this Sabres team. I at least keep saying they’re not as good as the first quarter of the season but not as bad as the second. The stretch run is do or die.

Like, share and comment on this here blog. Whether or not the stretch run is as fun as we hope it will be with the ending (or lack thereof) we hope it has, this blog will provide you with the fan reaction that the consummate hockey writers and beat reporters not dare waste their time with! I hope you enjoy these posts and I hope to hear from you if you are the type that normally reads this far. You can expect an Amerks Angle post over the bye week that I anticipate will be awfully fun and perhaps another surprise or two on the blog side. That said, if you’re watching every game and thinking about each deeply like me, maybe take a breather from hockey and go sledding or something. Here in Buffalo there is no lack of snow at the moment. Stay safe and Let’s Go Sabres!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. The plus side of this big olde break is it gives Jeff Skinner and other probably-injured players time to heal. Heal up boys, for starting on the 29th: WE RIDE!

#buffalo sabres #hockey #blog #nhl

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andrewuttaro · 5 years

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New Look Sabres: GM 41 - FLA - Nope!

I had a wicked narrative setup for this one. Linus Ullmark gets the start, he shuts down the Florida Panthers after a weak stretch for the team and Carter Hutton and begins his coup to take over the starting role ahead of schedule! It’s not that Ullmark didn’t have a great game, it’s an open question which goalie gets the nod for Boston on Saturday (more on that later), but this game was much more a matter of the losers of three straight Buffalo Sabres squeezing out a W by the skin on their teeth. The last two or three minutes of this game could be described from a Sabres perspective as nope nope nope nope! I got to see this one in the flesh and as refreshing as it is to hear the building really into every zone clearance and icing these days it is quite something to hear it pissed as well. This game had some refereeing turns that could’ve decided the game but luckily Jeff Skinner had a night and yea, secondary scoring did kind of show up and what do you know, there’s your first win in eight games against the Panthers. The road there was hard with the monster-sized pothole in the middle of that road being Roberto Luongo.

The Sabres remembered the sting of the two losses against this Florida team and the game began with some aggression. The home team would only just outshoot the Panthers in the first period but for the first time I can think of since maybe the Thanksgiving Eve game against Philadelphia, Buffalo’s best period was the first one. It was one of those net-crashing plays Buffalo has come to really profit from when Jeff Skinner got the puck and skated further into the crowd of red striped jerseys and got the shot away just as he lost his footing. It was a goal and Rick Jeanneret predicted it would be on the highlight reels across North America so keep an eye on that one. Tage Thompson’s line got a turnover in the neutral zone a few minutes later and streamed right back into the O-Zone. Thompson took the puck through the right circle and shot it around the defender Yandle and the screened goalie. The Sabres were up 2-0 before even the halfway point of this first period. The Panthers response opportunities came but Ullmark stood tall and Luongo looked very human as that was the way the first frame ended.

Jack Eichel was out in this game. He’ll be out again Saturday to be re-evaluated next week according to Phil Housley. It’s unfair to Evan Rodrigues but the media including the team media itself kind of made E-Rod out to be the replacement centering Skinner and Reinhart on that first line. E-Rod did fine with his chance but the second period altogether showed just what Jack Eichel means to this team. The Sabres got pretty sloppy in the middle period, just holding off the Panthers for most of the period. Then Rasmus Dahlin got knocked down way back in the Panthers D-zone before Frank Vatrano and Jayce Hawryluk got in on Ullmark with only Marco Scandella in the way. You can imagine how that two-on-one turned out and the visitors got on the board. The indignation in the building was loud because of that Dahlin knock down. The period just did not go Buffalo’s way as Thompson got penalized for a very soft call for tripping and Okposo goal got called back because he was pushed into Luongo as he was already falling. I don’t care to litigate all the crowd-upsetting calls because calls or not this second period was not Buffalo’s period. But hey, the Sabres are normally fantastic in the third, right? Oh… uh about that… well it wasn’t a disaster, as the third period got under way and quickly the Sabres got something out of it.

A Lawrence Pilut shot from way out at the blue line was redirected in front my Sam Reinhart into the net: 3-1 and the two goal lead is back. This period, not unlike the first, was remarkably even in opportunities. The Panthers took a page from the Sabres book here and crashed the net with the man advantage and Mike Hoffman got the goal over a sprawling Ullmark at 12:15 into the final frame. I think this was the goal that really ended my Ullmark Coup narrative because at this point that lack of a save set Florida up for a comeback in the last eight minutes. Florida poured it on for a hot minute before Jeff Skinner went in unassisted and shot a goal that bounced through Luongo and embarrassed him so hard he laid back on the ice like we Sabres are his torturers! I’ll admit that was a little satisfying knowing what he’s done to this team over the years. I’ll tell you that was supposed to be the insurance goal to bag this game but nope nope nope nope, the Sabres had to fight off a Florida team that was not ready to go out into the cold January air just yet in a frantic final few minutes. Luongo got pulled; empty net and Buffalo missed every potential shot on that empty net. Meanwhile Aleksander Barkov reminded us how he is a rising star in this league and quickly becoming a Sabre-Killer of Luongo proportions as he cleaned up a Yandle rebound reaching all the way around the glove of Ullmark to put the visitors within one. Nope, nope, nope! I grabbed my head in agony in the last minute and a half of this game but luckily for my wife I would not go home grumpy about this one. It ended 4-3 Buffalo. It was barely a win but a win the Sabres really needed at the moment and against a team like Florida who’s really shown you what for in the prior meetings.

As sweet as a Sabres win against the Panthers feels right now, it only stops the bleeding right now, and only just. Both the Bruins and the Islanders played last night as well and got their two points each as well, even Montreal got a win to keep the wildcard race in the east same as it was the night before. The Sabres enter Boston Saturday night without their Boston-born and performing Captain needing a W there as well to make headway against the tightening middle pack of the East standings. It’s the last matchup between the Atlantic Division teams and it would be pretty fun for the season series to end 2-2 considering how both teams have fared this season; also its Boston so come on, kick their asses! After that there are six games before the bye-week including a three-game trip through Western Canada. Then it’s the stretch run for the last two months of the season.

I talked a fair amount about what this season has been and what it means in my Midseason Thoughts post. That’s the last one before this blog post and if you just can’t get enough of New Look Sabres I recommend that as well. If you just can’t get enough of New Look Sabres I would also appreciate it if you dropped a like, comment and shared this around where you can. The Buffalo Sabres are undefeated in 2019, what a year!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. The World Juniors Tournament is proving fun for Buffalo rooting interests as the Finnish team offed eternal-favorites Canada with the help of Sabres goalie prospect Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (UPL for short) and Oskari Laaskonen. Matej Pekar and Mattias Samuelsson aren’t doing too bad either for the Czechs and Americans respectively.

#buffalo sabres #hockey #blog #nhl

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andrewuttaro · 5 years

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New Look Sabres: GM 24 - TBL - Going Stan

5-2 Regulation Loss

We’re all resigned to it now aren’t we? This brutally disappointing November has made us all accept, barring a wicked trade or a Yuletide comeback, that this season will probably be another stinker. Sure, they’re still only four points back of a playoff spot but we’ve all seen this show before haven’t we? It’s now looking like a decent chance the Sabres will have a two-win November… like March… ugh. I’m sorry, I don’t got a rant in me. I’m not upset, I’m just disappointed. How do you follow a sports team you know is going to suck? Other than the tank thing which I know I can’t do; you normally pick a player or two and ride them like you’re the biggest One Direction fan in your High School. I went off the deep end after this game last night. Someone tweeted Carter Hutton isn’t looking good, I thought back to Linus Ullmark’s god-like performance Sunday night and went into full stan-account mode. I’m finding all the gifs I can and dusting off my favorite hot take: Linus Ullmark is the best goalie in the organization. That’s right move over UPL and your fake hips! Move over Carter “I looked good because I was Pekka Rinne’s backup on a fun playoff run” Hutton! The revolution continues! Lord knows this organization is going to go on platooning them because it’s law apparently that this club cannot have fun and or a smart deployment strategy. Are we in hell? Like Donald Trump is President but not only that but he’s been all but proven guilty of treasonous bribery and nobody cares. Sorry, no need to get political but this world kinda feels like the upside down these days. Botterill hasn’t pulled the trigger on the trade we’ve been waiting for since July and the coach we all loved until Halloween decided to call Phil Housley for some deployment advice. I could just be grumpy because those Buffalo Wings from Sunday night wreaked havoc coming out the other end during this game. Saying that might be worse than going political. Hmm. I guess we should talk about the game now.

I missed a few things last game because… well to be very frank I’m not watching these games. I’m going to the Calgary game tomorrow and that will be the first game I sit through the entirety of since that Isles 1-0 snooze fest. Brandon Montour as a forward… *Very RJ voice* WOW! Evan Rodrigues injured in the first play of the game further deepening a forward injury crisis when the team has already fallen behind in the standings? *Even more RJ voice* They’re bad, SCARY BAD! So nobody would have been shocked if you told them the Sabres were going to lose this game. They’ve looked like garbage and Tampa is one of the better teams of the cap era. However this game was looking for ways to kick us in the balls. Andrey Palat hardly has to work to get a defensive zone turnover out of the visitors and he gets it to Nikita Kucherov who puts in… 13 seconds into this game. I don’t know what your game day habits are but my dad would still be on the concourse buying beer. I just ran out of money for the streaming service I got Sabres games on, so I’ve been working with the illegal streams reddit and that nasty underbelly normally causes me to not get my eyes on the game for the first 2-5 minutes. I would have missed that goal… you know, if I was watching. But as I said, this game, at least in the first period was looking creative ways to hurt our genitals. So after an early Tampa goal how do you do that? How about an Eichel to Olofsson to Sam Reinhart goal 3:40 in to even it up at 1? Sure! It was fun little goal. The cute top line we’re stuck with made a full neutral zone transition as the nerds say and Sam Reinhart took a shot that probably would have gone wide had Andrei Vasilevskiy’s pad not redirected it in. We’ve seen this show before though. With that tie the most I could muster was a solid Larry David “Meh”. This club can’t win unless it throws everything, and the kitchen sink out the door these days.

Buffalo didn’t look particularly awful in this game either. They outshot Tampa 27-14 in the first two periods. For a minute they wanted this game. But just like we’ve seen over and over this month, something just doesn’t connect, and they can’t get it going. Last night however, they had one more trick up their sleeves before the Bolts took the game away. Jimmy Vesey is the beneficiary of a blueline giveaway and takes it all the way home for the 2-1 Sabres goal! When I saw Jimmy Vesey unassisted I was already shocked but a breakaway against the Bolts? This stuff is getting weird now. Rasmus Asplund, now a fulltime Sabre because of the forward plague going on, got to Vesey first after the goal and you can’t see his mouth, but you know he was saying “Holy Shit, if you scored I can totally score!” Sorry, fourteenth Rasmus, you would not score in this game. But before we dive headlong into the negatives, and you know there is a lot of them, let’s sneak in some happy thoughts for your shortened work week. Victor Olofsson now has a four-game point streak with the Reinhart assist. Neat, right? In this economy!? A point streak during this stretch! There is more: Jack Eichel is now on a six-game point streak with six goals and five assists in that stretch. That’s the most points of any player on this team as if I needed to tell you that. I’m going to write a children’s book called Jack and Linus. It will be all about if you only have two friends in the world, you have to love them and treat them with respect. You have to defend them from the suburban hockey dads but also the stat geeks who will tell you Ullmark isn’t the best goalie in the organization. Yes, if this season is going to get bad I’m going to become a stan for Jack and Linus. I need something! I am not going to go to the Rochester Americans like I did in 2017-2018; they need to win a playoff game before I’m going to trust them with my heart again! Well after 2-1 we go headfirst into the rout.

First it was Mikhail Sergachev, the kid we passed on for Alex Nylander, getting a powerplay goal for the Lightning. Anthony Sciandra @SciandraSports brought up a devastating point: in November the Sabres have given up more goals on the powerplay than they’ve scored. They’re now 1-31 on the man advantage. That is the kind of stat where you can envision the Jennifer Lawrence Yikes gif as soon as you hear it. Are you ready? It. Gets. Worse! Yanni Gourde scores because to make it 3-2 Bolts and shortly thereafter this game gives us its hardest and most painful shot to the reproductive organs: the Sabres on the powerplay and Rasmus Dahlin drops the puck back before getting drilled in the face by Alex Cernak. When I say drilled, I mean the elbow was used as the drill head. Dahlin didn’t see it coming and falls to the ice. He did not return to the game. The zebras didn’t call it because of course they didn’t, this is the NHL! Cernak has a hearing but you and I both know this is a junk league, right? In a league where Robert Bortuzzo gets a four-game suspension for trying to murder Victor Arvidsson you know Cernak isn’t going to regret that hit. I don’t often use the term chicken shit but that was chicken shit. Ralph Krueger confirmed it was concussion in the postgame and say what you will about Krueger’s patience and hospitable manor, I would have preferred some anger over saying its in the league’s hands. I know you’ve been in England for a hot minute but over here we shit in the league’s mouth every chance we get. They deserve it. And the Sabres deserved the 5-2 loss that followed after surrendering in the third period. There was a 6-2 goal called back, but I think the game was over at that point.

How long am I going to be a Stan account? Well… if they lose to Calgary I am 100% going to stay this way into December. With a home-and-home series with the reborn Toronto Maple Leafs I’m going to need the armor of my sweet boys. Like, comment and share this blog if you need that armor as well. While you’re at it, if you like making fun little graphics, put Linus Ullmark and Jack Eichel in a little thing together; maybe two stoic faces back to back. I love the Eichel talking to Dahlin photo I got as my twitter cover now but if this gets rough I’m going to need the statuesque grace of Eichel and Ullmark watching over my tweets. I’m going Stan for now and it feels so right. It’s a busy holiday week on the blog, there is something going up every day. Yesterday and today it’s New Look Sabres. Tomorrow its State of the Support Episode Six, Thanksgiving Day its New Look Sabres again and Black Friday you’ll get a rare post from my religion blog: Hypostatic Thoughts. I think I’m going to post the one about Purgatory. That topic feels somewhat appropriate in a Sabres context right now as well, eh? Well I hope they don’t suck against Calgary. We’ll see! Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. My Ten Year Challenge tweet was a little too easy.

#buffalo sabres #hockey #blog #NHL #stan

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andrewuttaro · 5 years

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New Look Sabres: GM 16 - TBL - Sweden Pt. 1

3-2 Loss to the Lightning

The Tampa Bay Lightning have dominated the Atlantic division in the Eichel Era so far but particularly Buffalo. Since our sweet boy Captain Jack entered the league in 2015-2016 Buffalo has gone 4-10-2 against the Bolts. When Joe Yerdon pointed this out it wasn’t anything about Eichel, it was the recognition of an opportunity this two-game series against the Bolts in Sweden presented: a big stage against a tough opponent to prove this Sabres team is not the same one of old. I’m bias in the matter, I happen to think we are looking at a transformed hockey team in Buffalo, but one or two wins on this international stage might go a long way to prove the point. That point was not proven against hot teams in Washington or New York, but you can’t change the past. To think of this Lightning club as the proverbial goliath of the Cap Era that it probably is maybe the first instinct, but it wasn’t necessarily the current form of the team coming into these games. They were a shade under .500 at 6-5-2 coming into these two games so there is palpable opportunity here to get a few points against a squad that you got to believe will take over the division as the season goes on. Opportunity one missed. But first, let’s talk about what might just be the greatest game against the Lightning the Sabres have ever put together. There are not a lot to choose from with these two sides normally being good at different times and dog walking the other depending on who it is. Let’s go back to February 2008: just far back enough for the Buffaslug but recent enough to be on MSG network. The Sabres are down 2-0 with about 18 minutes left in the third period. Derek Roy scores the Sabres first goal before Tampa seemingly puts the game out of reach at 3-1 with a little over six minutes left. Toni Lydman gets Buffalo to within one before Tomas Vanek, the new sacred cow of the organization after a disastrous off season, sinks the equalizer and sends it to overtime where he taps in his second of the night to win it 4-3. Those of you who submitted your thoughts on the best games between these two teams agreed Vanek was on fire in this game. Alright, back to the present: the Sabres stayed with the Lightning this afternoon but ultimately fall 3-2 in regulation.

Nikita Kucherov and Alex Killorn scored goals in the first period to give Tampa the early 2-0 lead in Stockholm but the story of the first period and probably this whole game was the hit on Vladimir Sobotka. Sobotka had just taken a shot by the blue line and was staring naturally downrange. Nikita Kucherov slows up a little before going table-top-mode into the unsuspecting number 17. Vladdy did what anyone would do in the situation: rollover top to avoid blowing out a knee. He ended up landing headfirst on the ice before getting a little check from Kucherov as a parting gift. There was no call and Sobotka did not return to the ice for the rest of the game. Early reporting tells us he may have tweaked a hip. Even good ole boy Pierre McGuire on the NBCSN broadcast was like “Yeah, that’s no good.” These two games count in the standings, so the league sent over a staff of NHL trained officials and they all very much looked it in this game. Ralph Krueger gave them what for too. He cussed out all three assembled on-ice refs as Sobotka was helped off the ice. The thing that was audible on the broadcast was “Figure it out, you all got eight eyes!” We could talk about how bad officiating was in this game, and it was bad, but that isn’t just us. Officiating has been bad across this league this season and for at least a couple years now. Part of me wants to blame it on the thousand interpretations and minutia of how rules are actually enforced but that would blame it on something other than the ones who deserve it: a league that just doesn’t want to make a tough decision if it doesn’t make them money. If your commissioner is going to extoll the “success” of the new offsides rules staring directly at four blown calls each week then you just got to come to terms with it being junk league. I’ve come to terms with it: it’s a junk league.

I listened to most of this game on the WGR 550 radio side. It was not ideal. Don’t get me wrong, I love Rick Jeanneret and how can you not love 716 Sports Bar, but Rob Ray and RJ sounded like they were calling a backroom poker match in Vegas. You couldn’t hear any game action… which I suppose makes sense since the game was in Sweden and unless a goal is scored all you hear is the dull roar of people talking in a restaurant in the background. If you were there I’m sure it was a fun time, but I think we can utilize RJ’s talent a little bit better than stumbling through a game watching on a bar screen like any filthy peon like myself. The man is a legend, if you’re not going to fly him there give him some respect and have him call the game without the distracting background bar noise. But yes, goals on the radio are actually great, even broadcast live from 716. Rasmus Ristolainen took a shot from the blueline and it ended up in the net. On the radio it sounded like Risto got credit at first, but Sam Reinhart tipped it in to cut the Lightning lead in half. The Sabres had not scored in almost six periods, three buildings and two continents so that was refreshing to hear just to hear. The shooting percentage drop-off team wide has come home to roost. If you’ve been watching this trend unfold you’ve probably been biting your lip like me. I like to think of myself as the go-to Buffalo Sabres optimist, I even said this team is a transformed team earlier in this same postgame reaction but shooting percentage consistency is something good teams figure out. You’re not going to convert every opportunity but as the great one Michael Scott once said: you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Throughout this game Sam Reinhart and Jack Eichel were the offense of this team. Of course our favorite checking line the Roaring Twenties got their chances too but for the most part any recovery of the cratering shooting percentage was going to come from one of those guys. Equal time: Olofsson and Montour looked hot tonight as well.

Entering the third period down 2-1 it was clear we had something of a low-grade goalie duel on our hands. Andrei Vasilevskiy needs no introduction, he’s the last defense of a club that has the firepower to sleepwalk its way to a President’s Trophy; but Linus Ullmark, NATIVE OF LUGNVIK, SWEDEN HIMSELF, was up to the task. He blocked bangers from every star on this Bolts roster and this game was close because these two came to duel! When Yanni Gourde tapped in a rebound 7:45 in the third to put the Bolts up 3-1, Ullmark only let it in because his team was playing U10 lacrosse defense. Before the Pat Maroon assist materialized Henri Jokiharju was the only guy on the puck carrier doing what can best be described as a reverse hip check. It was weird and it was awful timing considering we were starting to see those Third Period Sabres we’ve caught from time to time. Turns out those comeback kids were waiting in the wings; about four minutes later Sam Reinhart struck again. This time hip-checking Henri got an assist and this time it felt deserved after a sequence of events that saw Victor Olofsson laying in the opposition net mere seconds before the shot that would once again bring his team within one. Reinhart’s quick release shot went through the woods, a five hole and in! And so we got a reminder of what this club looks like when they push hard. They weathered a Lightning powerplay that came shortly thereafter, and our very own penalty-drawing machine Jeff Skinner even drew a powerplay to contribute to the cause. Ultimately it came up short and the max number of points the better blue team can take home from Sweden is now two.

The four-game losing streak stings a bit, I’m not going to lie, but at least we’ve gotten the insider reports of Botterill looking to make a trade. Good job, Jason! You’ll get the full A when you actually make a move. Three months of sitting on your hands is what made last season blow up in spectacular fashion, don’t make the same mistake again. Also: the team being in Sweden gives us some prime content from a club loaded in Swedes. Apparently Linus Ullmark knows of a great candy shop in Stockholm. Casey Mittelstadt misses his roommate Rasmus Dahlin a little bit according to an interview. Dahlin, the source of 70% of his Instagram content, is busy with family and… a Swedish girlfriend!? Fun times in Scandinavia, eh? Like, comment and share this blog for more of such fun. Rather, follow me on twitter @UttaroSports. I retweet the bajebus out of that stuff. Let’s hope this fun European trip can produce some points tomorrow! That would make the plane ride home that much better, eh?

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. Pierre McGuire is not a fun guy for color commentary in case you needed a reminder.

#buffalo sabres #hockey #blog #NHL #sweden

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andrewuttaro · 5 years

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New Look Sabres: GM 27 - FLA - The Linus Ullmark Show

I was prepared for this matchup to be the grudge blood feud for the ages in September. Lone behold the Sabres are coming off a war of a game in Tampa Thursday night into a game against a Florida Panthers squad that is… *checks notes* … dead last in the division? The Sabres were just leading the league and the Panthers are dead last in the Atlantic? What happened to our playoff race? Well here’s the burn book anyway: Why should we hate the Panthers? Florida: You are the constant reminder to Sabres fans that it could be worse. We could have a grand total of 14 fans at home games. We could have an arena so far out of town it’s almost in a swamp. We could have a perennial playoff contender and sabotage it from within the organization. You won the Mark Pysyk trade in a landslide but lose the relevance race every time. Sun Belt expansion’s forgotten little brother is the worst of the teams in this division that don’t have a Stanley Cup. Florida, you’re a retirement home for players that were once good and executives who don’t exactly know how to manage a roster under a salary cap. You’ve managed to miss or lose in the first round every year of Jack Eichel’s time on this earth. We here in Buffalo were expecting a race for a playoff spot with you this season but you tapped out of that one early. I would feel bad saying this to any team that actually has fans but once Bettman is out and a new commissioner comes in I relish your move to Quebec. That last burn still felt a little cheap. Nonetheless I think I join the symphony of Sabres fans hoping the Blue and Gold land the people’s elbow on this team from the top rope.

This game I took in largely through radio and twitter. I was down the Thruway in Rochester watching my brother make beautiful Christmas music. What became apparent before I even put the phone away for the opening song was that this game wasn’t going to be the rout many Sabres fans hoped for. Florida matched Buffalo in shots and as the game went on they outshot the visitors. The only line that really produced this game was the top line. Sam Reinhart and Jeff Skinner made their rush out of the d-zone toward Panthers goalie James Reimer and Reinhart got the puck across to Skinner at the perfect moment for him to arch it in: Sabres up 1-0. I’m not ready to say the refs were quite as bad last night as they were the night before in Tampa but let’s just say penalizing both Rasmusi that first period including one for interference on Michael Haley, the last true goon, made me wonder. It was the penalty on the younger Rasmus Dahlin that led to a Panthers powerplay goal for Jared McCann. In the second period it looked like the Sabres may be able to stem the tide of the growing tsunami of shots the Panthers were putting on. On the Sabres’ first powerplay of the game a little fewer than three minutes into the second, Sam Reinhart got a pass from Jack Eichel he sunk: Sabres 2-1. On that goal Linus Ullmark got his first career NHL assist. Yes, the goalie got his first point. Goalie assists aren’t exactly uncommon but they’re not every month so Ullmark getting one in his first non-Saturday start, only his eighth start this season, is a little fun. Certainly this game wasn’t terribly fun for Linus as before the night was out he would face 43 shots while James Reimer would only face 24 shots off the sticks of Sabres. Linus Ullmark was probably the principle reason the Sabres didn’t lose by a more embarrassing margin last night. This game turned into the Linus Ullmark show and although that really tickles my fancy it showed this game also wasn’t exactly an offensive one for Buffalo.

Just past 11 minutes into the final frame in regulation Evgenii Dadonov, daddy as the Panthers fans call him I hear, scored on a Florida powerplay to tie the game up on the play we’re used to the Sabres scoring on: the sausy stick fest in front of the net. We wouldn’t see that from the Sabres in this game as they had two bad periods in this game falling back into their bad first period habits in the third. Phil Housley would say after the game there simply was not enough possession time in the offensive zone for the Sabres and it cost them. This game went to overtime and although Buffalo seemed to figure out their possession jinx in the extra frame it only took one rush back into their own zone by Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau to end this one 3-2 Panthers. The Sabres did get the one point in the standings out of this one but this was probably a game they could’ve gotten the two points in. Moreover, this is Panthers squad that you could probably have capitalized on their struggles this season. Evidently the Miami Cats found the script for this game written in September and got the W.

Certain losses like that you want to chalk up to the back end of a two night trip but that excuse seems a little less credible than normal given this team was on a franchise record tying winning streak a few brief days ago. They’ve come through in close games and just because they had a rough physical matchup against Tampa Bay the night before this game, it doesn’t really track that it should mean this game would be the tired affair it became. The Sabres fell into one of their sins of only thinking their top line can score. It’s fun to have a top line that talented but they got to rediscover that secondary scoring they found if the wins are going to keep coming. They have a little leeway in the standings right now but you always need W’s to stay competitive in this league. Jeff Skinner’s life is a W right now as he notches goal number 20 in game number 27 this season. For perspective: only three other Sabres have scored 20 goals in fewer games two of them (Rick Martin and Danny Gare) did it in the 1970s, the other did it in 1992-1993 a season before I was even born, and all three happen to be Hall of Famers. Alexander Mogilny, holder of the Sabres single season goal scoring record at 76 (1992-1993), didn’t even score that many goals that quickly. Assuming Jeff Skinner plays this whole season he may and I use that may very tentatively, break 50 goals. At the very least, even if he drops off you got to think he beats his career best 37 goal mark set in 2016-2017. He’s fun and let’s all just agree we’d like to see him be with this team long term.

The win streak maybe over but the confidence it should give us in this team is eternal. If the Sabres can beat Tampa Bay, Winnipeg and Minnesota in three straight games they certainly can beat both of the Nashville Predators and Toronto Maple Leafs starting Monday night. There are certainly no guarantees as we learned in the swamp by Sunrise but they really ought to get back to the winning. Like, share and leave me a comment; hopefully next time we watch the Linus Ullmark show it’s a win!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Tom Wilson did it again. Who wants to bet we see any of him in the three matchups the Sabres have yet to play against the Capitals?

#buffalo sabres #hockey #nhl #blog

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