Sabres Weekend

Sorry about the lateness of my Sabres post, but I gotta tell you, the Sabres are making a lot of naysayers (me) believe in the team. I wrote prior to Friday, that this was redemption weekend because of their embarrassing performance against the Flyers and Bruins. I wrote if the team could split this weekend’s games, it would be a good step in the right direction. Well, they did much more than that, they swept the weekend series against 2 of the upper echelon teams in the NHL.

The Philly victory had to be the most impressive of the weekend. First, the Sabres were playing on back-to-back nights and had just played in a physical shootout victory over the Flames. Secondly, the Sabres haven’t exactly played well in their 3rd game in four nights over the season. Last but not least, the Sabres were only a week removed from getting spanked by the Flyers on their own ice and hadn’t beaten Philly in their last 5 chances. This was a game that the Sabres team from last year would of lost. Instead, the Sabres went for the jugular and didn’t let the ghosts of Flyers past intimidate them.

Random Thoughts:

-Where the hell have all these young Sabres players been all my life? First, we get Tyler Myers and Tim Kennedy, now we get Tyler Ennis who was rushed to the Philly game (Presidential style) from Portland to play for the injured Drew Stafford. All the kid does is score a goal in his first NHL game. I know, I’ve been giving Darcy Reiger and the Sabres front office a hard time when it comes to building their teams over the last couple months, but have to give the team credit for grooming tomorrow’s Sabres to play effective hockey today. Lets hope they can keep it going 2-3 years from now-

-Is it just me or is this team starting to remind me of the late 90’s version of the Sabres. Those teams were led by Dominick Hasek and a suffocating defense that would only allow a handful of scoring chances a game and were masters of the 2-1 or 3-2 games. Pat Kaleta is playing the role of Matt Barnaby with his agitating play, Craig Rivet is playing the role of Jay McKee with his stellar defense, and Ryan Miller is doing his best Dom Hasek with his minuscule GAA–

-Just like the 90’s teams, the Sabres are still having issues with their powerplay. It has gotten so bad that the team is putting Steve Montador on the point. I know they scored two power play goals against Philly, but the team’s power play has to improve, especially since they are having issues scoring-