Buffalo Sabres: Best Chance To Fight Adversity Rests On Robin Lehner’s Shoulders
The Buffalo Sabres are starting their season without Kyle Okposo and Jack Eichel, and should be without Eichel for a few weeks. Time for the No.1 goaltender to enter God mode.
When fans first heard about Jack Eichel’s injury at the end of the Buffalo Sabres practice Wednesday, most of them went into shock.
Let’s face it: no one thought that would happen, especially at what was essentially a no-contact practice. Watching Eichel go down, screaming in pain, was a suckerpunch to Sabres fans everywhere, or as one fan put it on Facebook, “feels like someone just ran over my dog.”
Yeah: it sucked that bad.
After the shock wears off, though, comes the denial, and there have been numerous Tweets, news articles, and blog posts that have tried to convince Buffalo Sabres fans that the team is deep enough on offense that it can still win without Eichel, which is absolute garbage . . . especially after the team’s 4-1 drubbing at the hands of Montreal on opening night.
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Sorry, Sabres fans – there is no combination of players on Buffalo’s roster or in their prospect pool who is going to make up for the absence of Jack Eichel – and God help us all if Evander Kane is seriously injured, too. Instead, if the Sabres are going to somehow stay afloat and hover around the .500 mark until Eichel returns, they will have to rely on a superhuman effort from Robin Lehner . . . which seems less likely after the loss to Montreal, but let’s not go there yet.
It makes more sense for the Sabres to become a team that relies on its defense (yuck), its goaltender, and timely scoring to win games than it does to hope that role-players will suddenly morph into 40+ point scorers. The offensive firepower just isn’t there, but a smart defensive scheme and a stout Robin Lehner in goal can make the Buffalo Sabres competitive even without Eichel and Kane -no, I’m not s**tting you here.
We’ve seen Lehner keep the Sabres in games they probably had no business winning – the Sabres’ three-game road trip in California last season comes to mind, when the Sabres failed to score against Los Angeles and Anaheim yet still had a chance to win due to Lehner’s performance – so it is not like we’re discussing an impossibility here. GM Tim Murray saw SOMETHING in Lehner; otherwise, the trade that brought him into the 716 would never have happened.
Obviously it’s kind of hard to judge how good Lehner truly is based on last season, what with his ankle injury and all.
And last night, he got no help from a defense that looked as if it was made up of beer-league scrubs instead of professional hockey players.
At some point, though, the Buffalo Sabres need Robin Lehner to play like a goaltender who can steal games night in and night out. We’ve all seen the impact that Carey Price has on Montreal – the minute he went down with an injury last season, the Canadiens were toast. Now that Price is healthy (flu bug notwithstanding), you have some people predicting Montreal can go as far as the Stanley Cup Final. Yes: one guy can have that kind of impact on your hockey team.
Can Robin Lehner be that kind of guy for the Buffalo Sabres? If he can’t, this season is over before it even starts . . . but if he can . . . .
Next: Sabres Evander Kane Leaves Game With Injury
Share your thoughts on Robin Lehner and whether he can step up his game in light of all of Buffalo’s injuries!