Buffalo Sabres Show Fight In Loss To Panthers
Tuesday night the Buffalo Sabres lost to the division leading Florida Panthers 7 to 4. The Panthers got out of the gates early and often, scoring four goals in 20 minutes to put the Sabres in an large hole for the rest of the game
You could easily see that in the first period that the were out-skated and out-played in almost every sense of the way, but there is two ways that you can see that. One way is the way the fellow writer Richard Spalding saw it: that it was an embarrassing loss and that bold changes need to be made.
On this point Rich and I agree: it is embarrassing to go down four to nothing less than a minute into the second period at home. It is hard to want to want to go see a team that does not play well at home. I think that it is embarrassing that the Sabres have a better record on the road then at the First Niagara Center. The Sabres are 9-16-3 at home which should not be the case.
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Most teams play better at home that is why it is called home-ice advantage; in the case of the Sabres it is more like a home-ice disadvantage. That record makes them one of the worst team at home.
Even thought the Sabres were down four to nothing they continued to fight which that is the point that I disagree with Rich when he argues that there needs to be bold changes. I don’t think that there needs to be bold changes because the Sabres have great core of young players that will stick together. I do think that changes need to be made in the way of some depth players, if you make the depth players closer to the skill of first line players it will help the overall of the team and continue to fight even though the game may seem out of hand.
You saw that in the game against the Panthers when being down by four to nothing to make it as close as two goals in the second period when Sam Reinhart scored twice on the power-play.
Then later in the second period the Sabres could have made it one goal game when Daniel Catenacci missed an open net high after he took a backhand shot, Coach Dan Bylsma had this to say after the game:
We’re still fighting to be in the game at that point in time, You kind of throw your head back a little bit with the missed opportunity over the cage, 4-3 might be a different game.”
The Sabres would continue to fight though figuratively and literally, as Evander Kane would have two 5 minute majors for fighting Alex Petrovic both times and he would win both times that was only in the second period.
In the third the Sabres would again score two goals to bring the score to six to four and Evander Kane would score his 13th of the season and Mike Weber would score his first of the season, but Kane was far from being done! After he scored his goal about two minutes later he would pick another fight. With whom you may ask? With sparring partner Petrovic of course. After this fight both would receive two minute Unsportsmanlike conduct, a five minute major for fighting, and a ten minute Game Misconduct.
The one thing that is important to me is that you got to see this team fight; after a horrendous first period they could have played defense and took a 4 to nothing loss (or worse) and just tried to escape from the First Niagara arena, but they didn’t. They almost made it a one goal game in the middle of the second. You didn’t see this team give up and take an L while also getting shut-out.
This is the same fight that has allowed the Buffalo Sabres to take teams to a one goal and/or overtime game. Those games where you see them fight is like the Home and Home with Boston, the games in the Midwest against Arizona where there was another literal fight at the end of the game and then you have the Colorado game that went down to the last few seconds when Colorado scored a goal to put them up by one goal. One more example is the last game before the All-Star Break against Ottawa when the Senators almost tied the in the very last second but ran out of time. This team has very little to no quit in them they do not know what it means to quit.
Out of their 54 games played so far, 26 of the Sabres’ losses have been one goal games. So to say that if the Sabres win 13 of the games that they lost by one they would have 26 more points than they do now, which would put them at 74 points and at the top of the Atlantic Division by four points over Florida.
Those things didn’t happen so the Sabres are at the bottom of the division and near the bottom of NHL – but it does show you how close Buffalo could be to being in the mix.
The team does not want to be the laughing stock of the NHL anymore; this team wants to win and they want to do it now or at least in the near future. As bad as the loss against the Panthers was, then, the fight that the Buffalo Sabres showed was impressive.