Sunday February 12 - Vancouver Canucks 4 - Buffalo Sabres 2
The Vancouver Canucks bounced back from Saturday's loss in Boston with a determined effort that earned them a 4-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres on Sunday, but it may have come at a high price.
Here are your highlights:
For the second straight game, Bo Horvat scored a goal and added an assist, but his status for Tuesday in Pittsburgh is now questionable after this late-game shot block.
Impressive final shift from Bo Horvat last night against Buffalo. Great effort. pic.twitter.com/meRHGCVJhf
Horvat looks like he's in a good deal of pain after that Jack Eichel shot hits him in the knee from close range, but he sticks with the play and is able to clear the puck out of the zone in the dying seconds.
Horvat had treatment and was in obvious pain post-game after late SH shot block. #Canucks have MON off. They'll need him TUE.
Next up for the Canucks—Sidney Crosby, currently at 998 career points, takes aim at 1,000 as Vancouver visits the defending Stanley Cup champions at PPG Paints Arena on Tuesday. Will Bo be able to play?
Here's the word from Pittsburgh, where Horvat underwent an MRI today.
Horvat MRI shows a deep bruise. No fracture. Not sure if he plays tomorrow in Pittsburgh.
Not great, but probably could have been worse. Bo has shown remarkable resilience when dealing with other injury issues—remember when he took Nikita Tryamkin's slap shot off the back of his head last month?
Also, keep an eye out on Tuesday morning for news on a possible Brandon Sutter injury. He appeared to hurt his wrist near the end of the second period but didn't miss a shift in the third and took almost all the crucial faceoffs as Vancouver tried to protect its lead. Ryan O'Reilly is an impressive 57.8 percent in the faceoff circle this season—sixth in the league among players who have taken at least 200 draws and just ahead of Ryan Kesler's 57.7 percent success rate.
O'Reilly took 11 of 14 draws in the third period for the Sabres, with Jack Eichel taking the other three. O'Reilly was 2-for-3 against Bo Horvat but just 3-for-8 against Sutter, who was Vancouver's main faceoff man in the second half of the period. Henrik Sedin, FYI, did not take a draw in the third and only took seven faceoffs in the game.
Sutter has quietly racked up some huge faceoff numbers this year. He's 12th in the league with 1,034 draws taken and his success rate is a solid 55.6 percent, tied with Paul Stastny for 15th in the league.
After giving up an early goal to Tyler Ennis after a horrible defensive sequence early in the first, the Canucks reclaimed the momentum in the game when Alex Burrows got in the kitchen of fiery Buffalo goaltender Robin Lehner.
The initial sequence is pretty innocuous, then Burrows got a smack from Lehner before getting bulldozed by 6'5" defenseman Justin Falk.
That incident led to minor penalties for Burrows, Lehner and Falk—and the ensuing power play resulted in Horvat's goal, his career-high 17th of the season, in front of a large group of friends and family that drove down from the London, Ontario area to catch the game.
Burrows later got more revenge on Lehner with this second goal in as many games, five minutes into the second period. That proved to be the game winner.
The other two goals were scored by Michael Chaput—the first multi-goal game of his career, with both of them coming a few seconds after the end of a power play.
Jacob Markstrom also earns some praise for a solid effort. He stopped 26 of 28 shots and didn't get much help from his teammates on either Buffalo goal.
I also found Sunday's game terribly interesting as a study in contrasts between two teams with a lot of similarities. Not only are Buffalo and Vancouver the 1970 expansion cousins that have both never won a Stanley Cup, they're currently separated by just one point in the NHL standings despite being at—shall we say, different stages of their rebuilds?
When the Sabres moved out a series of veterans, including Ryan Miller, at the 2014 trade deadline, they were applauded for their commitment to exchanging assets for draft picks and building a solid foundation for the future. Three years later, Buffalo boasts a roster with plenty of young talent but the team is still a long way from coalescing into a playoff threat.
Like Vancouver, the Sabres have a passionate fanbase, that's easily frustrated. I learned yesterday that they like to freak out about coach Dan Bylsma deploying Jack Eichel on the penalty kill. For example:
Why is Eichel on the PK? He’s rubbish at it. Twice tonight he blows it. PP and even strength only please.#sabres
Sabres' Twitter was also in a lather last night about what they perceived to be unjust officiating. Buffalo currently boasts the best power play in the league, but didn't get its first chance with the man advantage until late in the second period, when the Canucks were already up 3-2 and had received four power plays of their own.
Finally, after the game, Robin Lehner redirected the anger he had been aiming at Burrows and unleashed it on his teammates instead.
"Lehner called the Sabres’ performance “disrespectful” to the game plan that head coach Dan Bylsma has put together," per Jason Brough at NBC Sports.
“The good teams out there, they do the same thing over and over again, and when things happen… they fall back on the structure,” said Lehner. “The structure bails them out. And we have a structure, but we don’t play it.”
Today, there's backpedalling, especially as it's assumed that Lehner was also taking aim at Jack Eichel. From Bill Hoppe at Buffalo Hockey Beat, here's Lehner today:
“We all, starting with myself, got to take more responsibility,” Lehner said this morning inside KeyBank Center. “It’s not certain lines, it’s not certain people.”
“People can assume whatever they want,” he said today. “It’s not what I said yesterday. I didn’t name anyone. … It’s about all of us as a team. It’s about doing the small things. It’s about me making an extra save.
“It’s about Jack is our best player, end of story. When he’s going, we’re all going. When he’s not going, we got to have other guys going.”
Eichel's response?
“We got to stop blaming each other, blaming whatever we’re blaming,” Eichel said today. “Just come to the rink everyday and enjoy the fact that you play in the NHL. For me, I think I’m more than past getting worked up about it. I’m not going to change last night’s outcome with my attitude today.”
Can you imagine the reaction if quotes like these came out of the Vancouver dressing room? Even during the tough times, there's no doubt that the Canucks have stuck together this season—there has been none of this blaming, finger-pointing, lashing out.
Word was that the Columbus Blue Jackets and their followers were also choked about losing to Vancouver last Thursday. I'm rather enjoying the fact that on a good day, the Canucks can go about their business and expose some teams that seem to have quite high opinions of themselves.
After Sunday's win, the Canucks have moved within four points of that second wild-card spot in the West and opened up a two-point cushion over Winnipeg and Dallas. Just two games on the schedule tonight—Calgary currently sits three points ahead of Vancouver, ninth in the West. The Flames get back to work in Glendale after their bye week, facing the Arizona Coyotes.
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