(WGR 550) – The Buffalo Sabres did not start off well in their first preseason game action on Tuesday night.
Buffalo entered the third period against the Columbus Blue Jackets down 4-1, but they started playing the way head coach Don Granato asked them to and pulled out a 5-4 shootout win on the road.
Granato plain and simply disliked the effort of his team very much in the first half of the game.
“There’s no excuse for not working as hard as you possibly can work, and compete and doing things more direct when you’re not on your game," Granato said following the win. "Putting pucks to the net, getting to the net, putting pucks in spaces where you can track them down. We weren’t even focused on that in the first half.”
It wasn’t just that.
We saw players giving up great scoring chances on odd-numbered chances by passing to covered players.
“We were overthinking it, and my challenge to them was don’t analyze anything," Granato added. "We’re not playing hard enough. We need to elevate our intensity and passion for the game, and you start feeling better when you’re focusing your energy on that.”
Since they executed the comeback to win, you would think Granato spoke to the players about getting the "W" in-between periods. That was not the case.
“We didn’t even talk about winning," Granato said. "It was just we need better. J-J [Peterka] is a competitor, and he responds to those things. That guy is made of character.”
Peterka talked about after the win how his head was spinning early in Tuesday's game. Play was a lot faster than he ever has known, and you could tell by watching him he was lost. However, that changed as the game wore on.
The Sabres moved up in the second round of the 2020 NHL Draft to select Peterka, because they had a first round grade on him. He gave a brief glimpse into why in the third period of Tuesday's action.
While trailing 4-2 with Dustin Tokarski pulled for the extra skater, Dylan Cozens took a faceoff in the Blue Jackets zone. Linus Weissbach took Jack Quinn’s place on the line, because he was Buffalo’s best player on the night. Weissbach bolted past the defense to the right of Columbus goalie Jet Greaves and quickly set up Peterka in the slot. This kid is lethal when he gets chances like that, and he put a rocket past Greaves.
Tokarski remained pulled from the Buffalo goal, and just 1:10 later, Vinnie Hinostroza took a shot that was stopped by Greaves. On the scoring chance from Hinostroza, we saw something we haven’t seen in years - both Brett Murray and Weissbach went to the net, and Weissbach jumped on the rebound with just 53.4 seconds left.
Weissbach had a goal and two assists, and didn’t even score on the best play of the night. In the second period, he used his speed to completely and totally embarrass Columbus defenseman Jake Bean to get in alone on goalie Elvis Merzlikins, who made a great save.
Tuesday was also our first chance to see tough guy John Hayden in the lineup. He showed us that he’s hard to handle along the wall and he never gives up on a battle. That all led to him setting up Arttu Ruotsalainen on top of the crease for Buffalo’s first goal.
Ruotsalainen is small, but showed great strength to keep his stick on the ice and muscle the puck in.
Buffalo got a break when Rochester Americans forward Mike Mersch used his hand on the ice to punch the puck past Greaves.
I think what you can’t look away from here is Buffalo made this comeback using just five guys that, for sure, will make the team, and maybe three others that have a small shot at making it.
They started this game totally not engaged. They needed a wake up call in their first preseason game, but they responded to that call and won a hockey game they appeared to be out of.
I think the question now is, will these players take all of that into the rest of the season and be self-motivated?
