Buffalo, NY (WGR 550) - The Sabres didn't start the game flat, but it didn't take long to get there. Buffalo opened with a 7-1 shots advantage, but they lost their intensity when Pierre-Luc Dubois got behind Will Borgen to make it 1-0.
Zemgus Girgensons took a silly interference penalty and as that ended, it was 2-0. Buffalo has a lot of trouble with movement and wraparounds and the third goal was just that.
The fans justifiably booed the Sabres off the ice after both periods. Just to show you how bad their effort was against Ottawa and the Islanders, this game down 4-0 is much better than either one of those games.
Buffalo at least created some scoring chances in this game, but every time they got one, they would shoot the puck wide or at Sergei Bobrovsky.
Somebody said to me that there's no hitting by the Sabres, but who is going to hit? Jake McCabe will, Will Borgen did in the AHL, but not much up here. Girgensons will throw the occasional body check and Kyle Okposo finishes his checks as does Scott Wilson, but you can't expect Lawrence Pilut, Alex Nylander or Casey Mittelstadt to all of a sudden become huge hitters.
I feel bad for the fans. It is a shame that they spend their hard-earned money to see the team play like this. Things turned ugly in the third period when the chant of "Fire Housley" started. Okposo said, "They have a right to be mad, a right to be pissed, the second half of this year hasn't gone as planned, last night we were lifeless, tonight was a little better, but it was 4-0. We need to be better for them."
McCabe has a fire in his belly that needs to rub off on some of his teammates. He came back from injury on Sunday and he said, "I feel for them, it sucks, obviously it sucks for everyone involved."
If Jason Botterill was fuming for the fans after the Los Angeles game last season, I can only imagine how he feels now. I think the frustrating thing is the Sabres were quite a bit better in this game than they were in Ottawa or Long Island, yet when the game was over, it was a 4-0 loss.
