One goal. That’s all the Buffalo Sabres need tonight, and that’s all they should need. Confused? Maybe, but see, ‘goal’ is one of those words that can have several different meanings, and not all goals are created the same.
One goal per game hasn’t worked out for the Sabres this season, but that’s because the meaning of the word goal, in the context of this article, is rather different than what you may have thought when you first read the headline. Still, the Blue and Gold should only need one goal tonight, and they’ll be 1-2-0.
Why? Because that goal I’m talking about doesn’t necessarily involve scoring one goal into twine. Instead, it consists in winning. Told you the word ‘goal’ has more than one meaning. Winning should be the only goal for tonight, and they need to reach it so they can avoid an 0-3-0 slump to start the season.
Obviously, they need to score more than one goal into the net tonight if they want to maximize their chances to snag that ultimate goal of skating from a renovated KeyBank Center with the W and some much-needed momentum. We talked a little last week that they’re going to face a big task for the rest of the month, so yeah, scoring the ultimate goal is a necessity.
Sabres need to find a way to score more goals to achieve the goal
Okay, now how should the Sabres find their rhythm tonight so they can score more goals into the back of the net than the Los Angeles Kings and give their fans something to celebrate? Easy, just get the puck onto the stick of your playmakers, and let them play their game.
That means finding a way to get the puck to Tage Thompson and opening lanes for him to razzle-dazzle his way to the net and score. The Sabres bigger, more physical forwards need to get in front of the net and make room for themselves more, so playmakers like Rasmus Dahlin can fire the puck nearby, and they can do the rest.
Through two games, none of the above has happened, and the Sabres often found themselves stifled, or else they’d have scored more than two goals past the netminder this season. I get that there are a lot of newer forwards on this team, but tonight would be a great time to build that much-needed chemistry, show the fans they’re better than what they’ve looked like so far, and score the one goal that matters more than anything in this league - winning the hockey game.
If this article sounds rather basic to you, then good, I did my job. It was supposed to be basic, because the Sabres clearly need to get back to the basics.