Anyone for a lesson in the Toronto Cha-Cha?
By Tim Redinger
What better way to rebound from a nasty breakup (losing to Ottawa) than to take your new girlfriend (Toronto) ball room dancing. Its a simple dance. First off, you have to wear a white shirt with some blue accents, or a blue shirt with a white accent. Then you take one step forward, and eleven steps back.
The Buffalo Sabres, after starting out in the first period just as flat as they were in the Ottawa game, stormed out of the gates for the second and third period and routed the Toronto Maple Leafs 5-2. That puts the Leafs two game total at being outscored 11-4. In both games, the Leafs were down 5-1 before they netted another score.
Toskala appeared ready to face down Ryan Miller, however the icy stare from Miller became too much for the Leafs netminder, who let in some very soft goals in the second period. Miller continued to shine in front of his potential February bosses. I loved the late in the game shot of Brian Burke – I wasn’t sure if the look on his face was absolute disgust with his team, or the look of a man who found his starting goaltender for the 2011 Olympics in Vancouver, or a mixture.
The Sabres added two points to their Northeast division lead – and got some major help on the out of town score board. New Jersey put away Ottawa, and at the time of this article, Chicago was leading the Bruins, albeit by only one goal.
The Sabres all or nothing offense was back on tonight – capitalizing on chances that an on their game goaltender may have stopped, but you never know if you don’t shoot the puck.
The Sabres will need the offense to be on point again tomorrow night, as the Penguins come to down looking to add to their league leading 49 points. Lalime will probably be in the net tomorrow night, after his play against Chigago I am not going to automatically write off Saturdays game as a loss, but it could get ugly.
I would have to say the best part of the night wasn’t watching the Toronto Cha-Cha – the Toskala-Gustavsson Shuffle was pretty good as well. If midget tossing is a legitimate sport in Europe, the Sabres were enjoying a game of The Toskala Toss.
“We came into this game a little late and played from behind the whole time. We relied on Ryan Miller too much. It could have been different without him.”
Steve Montador summed up tonights game better than any satirical comment I could come up with. The Sabres needed Miller once again, because they were not ready to play hockey until well after 8 PM tonight. Luckily the opponents were the hapless Leafs, who are now 0-8 against Buffalo in the last eight contests, where Buffalo has outscored them 32-10. The Sabres continue their streak of winning when leading after two periods, the count now up to 15. Its a stat your able to really count on with this team this year. In past years the Sabres were always willing to give up a game late after leading.
Actually stuck working tomorrow night – so I won’t be able to watch the game. You can bet that I will be listening though.
P.S. I normally like to keep it clean here on Sabrenoise.com – but this needs to be said – Toronto was not the Sabres rebound girlfriend tonight, they were the Sabres bitches, plain and simple.