Buffalo, NY (WGR 550) - Talk about a fast skating, tough 60 minutes effort from every single player on the team, the Buffalo Sabres did just that on Saturday beating the Florida Panthers, 3-0.
It started right away when Zach Benson took a silly neutral zone tripping penalty nine-seconds into the game. Led by Alex Lyon, the penalty killers did a phenomenal job not only on this penalty kill but all day. Buffalo went 7-for-7 shorthanded making them 22-of-23 on the season. It took Buffalo two games to go from dead last in the NHL on the power play to fifth at 27.8% thanks to going 5-for-7 in the last two games. The PK is 95.7% which after the game led the NHL.
After killing off two penalties, the Sabres got a power play and it took six-seconds to score. Josh Doan scored his first goal as a Sabre by going to the net and tipping on a Tage Thompson shot.
Despite out playing the defending Stanley Cup Champions, but did let Florida hang around until Brad Marchand lost his mind on Rasmus Dahlin who had cross checked him from behind. Doan redirected a Jason Zucker pass into an empty net for his second power play goal of the game to take a 2-0 second period lead. That gave the Sabres five power play goals in their last seven attempts.
Just 3:08 later, Owen Power made a great read to turn a 3-on-2 into a 4-on-2 and Alex Tuch gave him a perfect pass for the tap in.
One of the things that was really noticeable in this game was how physical the Sabres were. Mattias Samuelsson had a very strong game, especially on the penalty kill where he was knocking down bodies around the net. This easily was the most physical game I’ve ever seen Samuelsson play. With Jacob Bryson going into concussion protocol after just 1:16 on the ice, Samuelsson played 22:01 with two hits and three blocked shots.
Conor Timmins was also extremely solid in his 24:30 of playing time blocking six shots.
Lyon was again the story playing against his former team. Lyon just never looked like he was in trouble or out of control making 32 saves for the shutout. In five games the veteran goalie has a 2.43 goals against and a stellar .929 save percentage. The question is, when does fatigue set in and when does Colten Ellis get his first NHL game?
Ruff breaks the season into five-game segments and he wants to get at least six out of a possible 10 points in those five games. That means as the Sabres start their next five-game segment, they have to make up two points.
As far as Florida goes, they’ve done something this season that the Sabres haven’t done, lose four straight games.
If the Buffalo Sabres play a majority of the time like they did in Saturday’s game, they will win a lot of hockey games. We saw players play out of character, we saw the whole team play fast, we saw every player show up to battle and show up around the net. We also saw defensively the team limit turnovers to almost nothing. They kept the middle of the ice clean and didn’t force Lyon into making many rebound saves.
The next test comes Monday in Montreal against the Canadiens.