BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Buffalo Sabres are chasing once again. With three wins in seven games, Buffalo is chasing the teams in the Eastern Conference. They also are getting behind and chasing during their four losses.
Last season, after losing eight straight games where they couldn’t even get a loser point, Buffalo fell behind six teams in the Eastern Conference and could never fully recover. They got by four of the teams, but couldn’t catch the Florida Panthers or the Pittsburgh Penguins.
For over a year, Don Granato has been pounding his fist on the podium with conviction that there’s nothing wrong with his system, and if it’s played correctly, Buffalo will win games.
After starting the season 0-2, Buffalo has won three of five games and two out of their last three.
Devon Levi has missed three games with a lower-body injury, giving Eric Comrie and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen their first action of the season in the net.
Comrie came within one minute of shutting out the New York Islanders for the second straight time and Luukkonen held a 5-1 lead over the Ottawa Senators with 4:25 left in the third period playing a spectacular game.
Comrie also played in the 3-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens and played very well, but Buffalo didn’t get players around the net and Jake Allen made 36 saves for the win.
As this season is starting to unfold, it’s proving Granato to be correct. The defensive effort was pretty bad against the New York Rangers and Calgary Flames and Buffalo didn’t win. It was better in Long Island vs the Islanders, but a very obvious penalty on New York was missed and it wound up in Buffalo’s net. The Islanders also got a goal on what appeared to be an offsides play.
In the overtime win over the Tampa Bay Lighting, the team's defensive effort was stellar. They limited a very good scoring team to very few Grade-A scoring chances. By limiting on defense, the Sabres were able to get scoring chances, but as Granato said,
“We tried to pass the puck to the back of the net.” They didn’t have a shooting mentality and that’s why they needed overtime to win.
Buffalo shook off a shaky defensive effort against Calgary and has now put together three games in a row where it’s been good. I know you won’t be surprised to hear that the Sabres won two of those games and should’ve won the third against Montreal.
On Tuesday, Luukkonen was so good against the Senators making the big saves when he needed to. After scoring one goal on 37 shots against the Habs, Granato said they need people around the net. After that game, Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch had one goal combined. Thompson had been playing pretty well, but I was starting to wonder if Tuch was injured because he wasn’t even close to himself.
Everything changed in Ottawa as the Sabres had five goals where there were multiple players around the net for each one of them. Tuch started fast and looked like himself. Just eight minutes in he led a 2-on-1 where he and Jeff Skinner were attacking with speed. Tuch gives Skinner the perfect pass and that assist gets his confidence right back up.
Tuch and Thompson don’t score pretty goals, but they get tips that go in because again, they’re attacking the net. Skinner banks one in off Anton Forsberg why? He was standing right on the crease fighting for the puck.
Even the shorthanded empty netter by Thompson was hard work to get the puck and quickly flip it down the ice. At the time, the Sabres were at a 6-on-4 disadvantage.
I talked about chasing the standing, but the Sabres have been getting behind early in games too, and against Ottawa, they made the Senators chase them. They also made the Lightning chase them as well as the Islanders in the game they beat them.
Now that they’ve had a game where they’ve scored six goals, I’m very interested to see how Buffalo will do against the New Jersey Devils on Friday and the Colorado Avalanche on Sunday.
The Devils will play the Washington Capitals before they host the Sabres. Colorado will visit Pittsburgh on Thursday. The Devils go into the Caps game 3-1-1 while the Avalanche is a perfect 6-0-0.