Hamilton: Sabres didn't think power play was that bad in Columbus

Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR) - The Buffalo Sabres were back to work on Friday after dropping their season opener on Thursday in Columbus.

Buffalo had three 5-on-4 power plays and a full two minutes of a 5-on-3 advantage, and overall went 0-for-5 while up a man.

I'm not going to lie, I thought that was as bad as I've seen them with the extra man. To me, everything was to the outside until Jack Quinn made a beautiful play in the third, beating Jet Greaves on a breakaway deke, only to have to puck slide under him, through the crease and hit the post.

After Friday's practice, both forward Tage Thompson and head coach Lindy Ruff totally disagreed with me.

"We had our looks, for sure. I would say capitalize on them would be the No. 1 thing," said Thompson following Friday's skate back in Buffalo. "When you get that many good looks, you have to score on a few of them.

"5-on-3, I thought we had a lot of good looks. Anytime you have a 5-on-3 it's just quick puck movement and shoot, which I thought we did a pretty decent job of. And we had a 5-on-4 late in the game and 'Quinny' has an empty net and hits the post."

The Sabres coordinate all the time with their analytics department, and Thompson says the numbers back up what he's saying.

"If you look at the analytics, we had 12 Grade-A chances on our power play, more than Columbus had. They just capitalized on them," he said. "Sometimes it's going to happen where you're going to get your looks and they're not going to go in, but that's our first real power play looks in a regular season environment and thought we did a decent job. Obviously we can improve on some things, but definitely liked the place it's in, if you look at it from Game 1 of the season to where it was Game 1 last season. It's just try to find ways to get better, and I think over time keeping that unit together and finding different tendencies that guys like, you'll gel quick so not too worried about that."

Ruff has had a chance to go over the video from Thursday's loss.

"First, 5-on-3, we had maybe four good looks that could've turned into goals. I thought we missed a couple of our shots, a couple of the puck plays weren't exactly what we wanted. But that's puck decisions they have to make based on are they getting too high. So I thought a couple of our decisions weren't good, but there was some positive in it," Ruff said after practice.

Sabres defenseman Olen Zellweger passed his baseline test from his concussion and was back at practice on Friday. You can tell he's anxious to play on Saturday. He says the hit put on him by Blue Jackets defenseman Carson Soucy in the preseason could've been looked at two ways.

"It was an unfortunate play. It got me in the right spot," Zellweger said after practice. "It's a bigger guy that got me right in the jaw, so I've got to put myself in better spots.

"I don't think it was a crazy dirty hit, but I don't think it was perfectly clean either. So it's one of those things where you've got to put yourself in a better position."

Zellweger says he's felt good for awhile, and Ruff indicated he will play in the home opener on Saturday. He was paired with Owen Power during Friday's session.