Buffalo Sabres: Takeaways from Opening Night to use against Florida

The Buffalo Sabres scored a massive upset on Opening Night. Here are three takeaways that they can apply for their tilt with the Florida Panthers.

The Buffalo Sabres are 1-0 after defeating the Ottawa Senators Thursday night by a final score of 4-1. Buffalo trailed at one point but looked like the team we saw during the second half of last season. In this article, I’m going to tell you what stood out to me while I was watching, and how they can apply some of them to Game 2 against the Florida Panthers.

Craig Anderson was absolutely amazing last night for Buffalo and that was my biggest takeaway from watching the game. He was the first star last night and for good reason. The Senators had 36 shots on goal and Anderson stopped 35 of them. He made some big saves, a few of them on breakaways.

I know it was only one game but don’t tell Craig that he’s too old. 41 years old means nothing in sports nowadays and even though it was one game, Anderson was very impressive against a good young Senators team. Anderson won’t be playing against Florida tomorrow, but he set the bar high for the incoming Eric Comrie, who is slated to be in the net.

Overcoming adversity

My second takeaway was how the Buffalo Sabres responded after a slow start. During the first period, Buffalo was having a hard time getting into the Senators zone. The Sens were playing good defense and made life hard for the Sabres. Once the second period started, the boys in blue and gold were able to figure it out and were much better during the last 4o minutes of play.

It could be because it was the first game of the season and they were trying to get into the flow of things but I will give the Sabres credit because they were able to get it going after the first period. If they have another slow start against Florida, their rebound against Ottawa tells us we don’t need to push the panic button.

Buffalo Sabres power play remains weak

If there’s one thing Buffalo needs to improve on, it’s the power play. The Sabres had four power plays and didn’t score on any of them. I will cut them some slack though because Ottawa didn’t score on the power play either and they also had 4 power plays.

Again, it’s only the first game of the season and I think they’ll figure it out but that was another takeaway I had from Thursday. The Sabres penalty kill was impressive as well, something that needs to stay strong against a mighty Florida Panthers team.

The third line’s the charm

My last takeaway was the third line. The Sabres third line consists of Peyton Krebs, Dylan Cozens and JJ Peterka. It’s hard to call them a third line because all three of those guys are very talented, but Peterka did get his first NHL goal as he would score the first Sabres goal of the season as well.

As you can see, Peterka was the recipient of a great pass from Cozens and he found the back of the net. It was nice to see JJ get his first goal and it was also nice to see some of the younger players impacting the game. The third line showed it is every bit as capable of scoring as the first and second. Something that will help them keep pace against high scoring teams like Florida.

That’s all I got for you but I will add how nice it was to see the fans back in the arena. It wasn’t a sellout but there were at least 15,000 fans in the building yesterday compared to last year’s opener where there was just over 7,000. Buffalo will look to go 2-0 as they will welcome in that powerhouse Florida Panthers for a matinee.