3 major improvements Buffalo Sabres must make in final stretch
By Sion Fawkes
3 – Physicality
The Buffalo Sabres let opponents bully them far too often. They don’t finish checks, they ease up before going to battle along the boards, and they have a tendency to skate away from opponents to avoid confrontations.
Okay, so there are a few, like Rasmus Dahlin and Dylan Cozens, who don’t. But Buffalo needs to elevate their level of aggression to match that of Dahlin’s and Cozens’s. Despite landing just seven hits in last night’s win over Anaheim, the Sabres were ironically more physical, and more than a few scuffles broke out during and between plays.
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But this must become the norm sooner than later. This isn’t a plea to play so angry that you forget what you’re doing on the ice, but the Sabres need to stand up for themselves more often than they have. And they also need to get inside their opponents heads more often.
(Statistics provided by Hockey-Reference)
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