Last night, the Sabres went to Air Canada Center to try to snap their two-game losing streak. Buffalo started out 2-0, and finished the first period ahead 2-1. The rest was highly quotable, and thankfully, the Sabres held on to win 4-3.
After a series of early icing calls against the Sabres, Rick Jeanneret exclaimed, “And again the puck is fired down the ice [by the Sabres]. Again again, Kaberle [of the Leafs] just let it go by him. And icing, again! I’ve gotta read the rulebook. I’m missing something partner [Jim Lorentz], I’m missing something.”
Christen looked at me and responded to that with, “I think Rick Jeanneret is going to break a blood vessel or something, the way he’s yelling.”
Later, there was a bit of a tussle between the Leafs’ McCabe and Maxim Afinogenov in front of the Toronto net. Jim Lorentz summed up the mutual cross-checking with, “I think McCabe was shocked that Max reacted. Max is a short fuse and he snaps.”
Buffalo’s third goal came on a deke by Briere. Jeanneret described it with, “…And Raycroft decided he was going to go downtown Toronto somewhere. Just took himself right out of position. And Daniel Briere stepped around him and lifted the puck into a wide open net.”
In the second period, penalties were assessed to both Roy and Numminen. (I think that Numminen, by the way, has the most Tolkienesque name in all of hockey.) To me, both were questionable, but I just watch the games on TV and I’m no professional referee. These back-to-back calls resulted in a 5-on-3 and, very quickly, Toronto’s second goal. That was their twelfth power play 5-on-3 goal of the season, which leads the league. I’ll just choose to blame it on the zebras.
The Sabres added a fourth goal, though. Lorentz really liked it, saying, “We saw a shot last night taken by Denny Malkin [of the Penguins] that was perfectly shot. Well, so was the one moments ago by [Buffalo forward Ales] Kotalik.” I have to admit it was pretty, and the defenseman looked like he was trying to get out of its way.
Lorentz later brought up one of Buffalo’s defensemen, Toni Lydman, who “is one of those players who’s deceptively strong. He just threw the Leaf forward down to the ice, right in front of the bench. As he flattened Stajan, hit him, spun him around. Then Pohl came in to challenge Lydman, and Pohl ran into a wall.” Lydman did not go down, but Pohl stumbled.
Frustrated with the penalties—which I agree were being called in one-sided fashion, Lorentz sardonically remarked, “And you know it’s going to Buffalo [the penalty] because that’s the only team that has been called for penalties here for about the last 15 or 20 minutes of hockey.” At this point, I dropped my jaw and laughed out loud at Lorentz’ audacity in implying on television that the officiating was uneven.
Apparently, RJ agreed because he interjected that, “The Sabres are certainly getting plenty of practice at penalty killing,” in his play by play.
There were quite a few instances where both teams had crowds in front of their nets. RJ summed one such instance up with, “They all whack at it but it’s held by the goaltender [Marty Biron].” That’s a good thing because Marty had given up a save on the glove side when he couldn’t hold the puck; apparently, he’d had problems with his glove in warmups. Luckily, Biron didn’t have to make the save at the end of the game; Toronto could have tied it up but a shot on the open side went wide, hitting the outside of the mesh.
Kevin Sylvester, from the Sabres Shootout postgame show and podcast, suggested, “Tell Marty he can give Rick back the suspenders.” In the postgame interview, Biron was wearing grey suspenders over his dark shirt—and RJ has been known to be seen in suspenders, himself. Grin.
Other game notes: