The Buffalo Sabres have a shot at redemption tonight with a chance to leap-frog a team that's directly ahead of them in the division standings. The Tampa Bay Lightning, who will have starting goalie Ben Bishop back after a nine game absence, are one point ahead of the Sabres in the Atlantic Division having played two more games so any win by Buffalo will move them up a rung and into sixth place.
It marks the second time in two weeks the Sabres will have had the opportunity to make their mark in the division. Buffalo closed out 2016 with a home-and-home versus the Boston Bruins and the opportunity to slice a six-point deficit down to only two with regulation wins. They fell flat on their face. Boston took both games and increased their lead over Buffalo to 10 points leaving Jack Eichel and many of his teammates steaming over that missed opportunity.
The good news is that those two losses against the Bruins seemed to wake them up, save for the first two periods against the Winnipeg Jets where head coach Dan Bylsma's eruption during a TV timeout snapped them out of a matinee siesta. In all the Sabres are 3-0-1 in 2017 and could have been 4-0-0 were it not for a blown lead late in the third period against the Chicago Blackhawks. That was another loss that left Eichel, and presumably his teammates, unhappy.
We get why Eichel was particularly stung by those Boston losses. In addition to falling off of a cliff after taking a 2-0 first period lead in the first game as well as losing crucial divisional points to a team they were trying to catch, he was playing against his hometown team. That said, Eichel didn't help the cause all that much as he was only able to garner two assists in those two games.
Simply put, after Buffalo scored those first two goals in Game-1, Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask shut the door for the next four periods while the skaters in front of him scored four unanswered in the first game for the 4-2 win then scored the first three en route to a 3-1 win in the second game as Buffalo didn't score their goal until very late in the second period. Rask was dominant once again and he's been giving the Eichel and the Sabres fits for the last two seasons.
Against Buffalo, Rask is 6-0-0 over the last two seasons allowing only seven goals on 194 Sabres shots for an astounding .964 save percentage. This season he's 4-0-0 allowing four goals on 128 shots for an even better .969 Sv%. And right now Rask epitomizes the Sabres' struggles against top-notch goalies.
The 2006-07 "Ferrari" Sabres could score on anybody at any time but once they were broken up the remaining "Core" couldn't beat a tough goalie if their lives depended on it and after that group was blown up the players from 2013-15 had trouble beating any goalie, period. Last year's edition of the Sabres was better than the tank years, but was still struggling against some of the best goalies in the league.
Here's how Buffalo fared against the top five goalies in save percentage from 2015-16 who played in 50 or more games:
This year they've gone 2-6-2 while those goalies have allowed 17 Buffalo goals on 304 shots for a .944 Sv%.
Tonight the Sabres will face Bishop who has been sidelined the last nine games due to an injury. He gave them some problems last season as only two Sabres were able to beat him in his two games against Buffalo--Nicolas Deslauriers in a 4-1 Sabres loss at Buffalo and Sam Reinhart in a 2-1 loss at Tampa. Although he has rather pedestrian 2016-17 stats overall (9-10-2; 2.79 GAA; .907 Sv%,) the 6'7" 217 lb. Bishop shouldn't be taken lightly by anyone in Buffalo. He was in net for a 4-1 win against the Sabres back in November, stopping 32 of 33 shots including this save-of-the-year nominee against Buffalo's Kyle Okposo (via Samboke on YouTube):
Some Sabres have been able to score against some of the best goalies in the league, but obviously they and their teammates haven't bee able to do it enough. Here's a list of who have scored for Buffalo against the goalies listed above:
2015-16 (25 goals total):
Ryan O'Reilly-5
Reinhart-4
Cody Franson-2
Tyler Ennis-2
Brian Gionta-2
Evander Kane-2
Deslauriers, Eichel, Johan Larsson, Zemgus Girgensons, Jake McCabe, Phil Varone, Tim Schaller and Mike Weber had one goal each.
2016-17 (17 goals total):
Okposo-4
Larsson-2
Kane-2
Marcus Foligno-2
Matt Moulson-2
O'Reilly, Girgensons, Eichel, Reinhart and Rasmus Ristolainen had one goal each.
There are outliers to this formula as the Sabres have smoked NY Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist for eight goals in two wins this season, yet they've also made backups look like Vezina winners. But for the most part, if you're going to be a playoff team, as a team you need to beat a top-notch goalie for however many goals it takes to win a game and it begins tonight against Bishop and the Lightning.
Tampa is looking to reverse an 0-4-0 losing streak while Buffalo is trying to extend their four-game point-streak (3-0-1.) This is one of those four-point road markers which will end up affecting how this season plays out for both clubs and you can bet your bottom dollar the Lightning will throw everything they have at Buffalo. Hopefully the Sabres do the same.
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