Ron Rolston and his assistant coaches learned a valuable lesson about the character of Buffalo's prospects. The Traverse City tourney is helping to reveal the character of his young guns.
Trailing 2-0 early in period one to the Minnesota Wild rookies, the baby Sabres chomped down hard and then proceeded to score three straight to take the lead.
Some chirpers on Twitter on Saturday found it easy to minimize the Buffalo win over Minnesota. They called it a meaningless preseason win. I beg to differ. When Terry Pegula bought the Sabres and Amerks, his vision was to create a "Sabres University" whereby the young prospects would be drafted, then crafted into NHL players. All the while, marinading in the Sabres culture and learning from the best of the best teachesr of the game of hockey. Lindy Ruff's philosophy would be used as the template for success. Bring 'em into the family, develop their skills, and get them ready to graduate to Buffalo.
Ron Rolston, Jay McKee, Chadd Cassidy, and Chris Taylor are the Rochester teachers. Pegula could not have assembled a better group of educators.
Saturday's win was more than just a win. It was a bedrock, a building block for the future success of the prospects.
Coach Rolston told sabres.com that panic was not an option after his team went down early.
“I don’t know if it was jitters, or just getting the feet under us, but we had a real slow start. I thought as the game progressed we got better and better as a team, and every individual on the team made adjustments that they had to -- whether it was our defensive core in our own zone, or our forwards playing the way they needed to play. It was good to see the guys making improvements.”
Captain Luke Adam ignited the Buffalo rally with a beauty of a snipe. Defender Nick Crawford used a Zack Kassian screen to beat the Minnesota goaltender with a point bomb.
2-2 after twenty.
Riley Boychuk made it 3-2. The Wild would tie the game at three to end the second period.
Jonathon Parker, Dan Catenacci, and Phil Varone closed the show. Impressive come from behind win.
The line of Foligno-Adam-Kassian were the best line combination in the game.
They are an NHL line by virtue of their skill and size. They dominated the Wild game.
Adam scored and was +3. Kassian and Foligno each chipped in assists and were +2 apiece.
+7 and three points. Not bad production. Foligno had a sure goal disallowed.
No surprise, considering the three dominated at Buffalo's rookie orientation camp at Niagara University in July.
After the win, Coach Rolston praise his Canadian Power Trio.
“They had a lot of chemistry out there. They’re all big bodies, and they have the right mix on that line,” he explains. “Marcus did a good job of making room and getting to the net, and the other two guys are hard to take off the puck. Offensively, they were very dominant for us out there.”
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