The Sabres completed a road trip last night with a shootout win over the Atlanta Thrashers, winning 4-3. (I still don’t grok the rules—especially scoring—for shootouts. You think I would after the Sabres have gone through so many of them this season. Oh well, I need to look it up.)
I only saw the last half of the third period. I turned on MSG at just the right moment to see Atlanta tie the game, 3-3. When I realized that it was the tying goal, I was upset that Buffalo was going to give up yet another post-All Star Game third period lead—as they had to the Islanders, and Devils.
To finish off the third and move into overtime, I thought that both teams had chances but perhaps Atlanta had the better ones. I believe it was Kovalchuk who had a shot over the net that rebounded in front of Miller—and if the other Thrasher player in front of the goal (I thought I saw number 15, but no one on Atlanta wears that jersey) hadn’t already turned around to retreat, it could have been an easy score for him.
In any case, the teams skated to the draw and went into a shootout. Buffalo avenged its earlier October shootout loss to the the Thrashers. Briere and Kotalik both had pretty goals on Lehtonen. Meanwhile Kozlov missed the goal after some nice moves, and Hossa’s shot was stopped by Miller.
I’ll take this win, because the Sabres have been slumping—or at least waffling. It’s funny that the NHL.com recap of the game was written more about Atlanta’s slump; almost everything they said about the Thrashers has been true about Buffalo of late. To review the Sabres’ recent trip slump, they:
- Lost a third period 1-0 lead against the New Jersey Devils on Saturday, going down 3-2 after three quick goals scored rat-at-tat against Miller. The first New Jersey goal was very iffy to me, since Miller basically—but not quite—had it covered. Miller clearly was upset about it, hassling the referee about not whistling the play dead before he spun into the goal. For a few minutes, Ryan could not shake it off and this led to the next two goals, both of which were fairly weak. One was an unscreened shot from the faceoff circle, after all. This was Miller’s third loss since the All Star break. Drury scored his thirtieth goal of the season—his sixth in five games—to lead all Sabres.
- Won 3-1 against the Boston Bruins in Boston on Thursday. Biron improved to 11-4-1 in goal. Drury scored twice—and although I missed the final minutes of regulation, it sounds as if his teammates were feeding him so he could try to pick up the hat trick. Pominville’s population increased to 23, a mark that Briere matched in the later Atlanta game.
- Won 7-1 against Boston in Buffalo last Tuesday to close out January. I can’t say much about this game because I missed it. It does seem to be an anomaly game, one really bright spot amongst some games that haven’t been so great.
- Lost 5-3 to Teddy Nolan’s New York Islanders on the previous Saturday. This game was just disgusting…giving up a third period lead to build “into its longest pointless drought of the season, as the team hasn't been able to add anything to its
- Eastern-Conference leading 70 total points since January 19,” as Sabres.com described it. Hecht did get two goals, so that’s something.
- Lost to the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-2 a day before the Islanders game. This was just not fun, but Drury did pick up both Buffalo goals in the loss.