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Sometimes You Get The Bear..... |
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This just in:
The Buffalo Sabres will not finish the 2018-19 season with an 82-0 record.
Sorry, Sabres fans.
Pump the brakes.
On opening night in Buffalo, the Sabres lost 4-0 to an amped up, motivated Boston Bruins team that was drubbed by a touchdown by the Washington Capitals on Wednesday night.
The Bruins were embarrassed on national TV and vowed to avenge their anger against the rebuilt Sabres the next night.
That’s the beauty of the NHL where you can suck as a team one night then correct your mistakes 24 hours later.
It’s okay. The Sabres will be fine. They learned a valuable lesson, which is to say never let a winded opponent impose their will on your team.
With the loss, the Sabres fell to 24-19-5 all-time in season-openers and 17-10-5 when opening at home.
What went wrong for the upstart Sabres?
Turnovers. The Sabres were -13 in turnover differential. Housley’s youngsters committed 19 giveaways, the majority of which were at the offensive blue line. The Sabres could only muster six takeaways.
That’s not winning hockey.
The Sabres started fast with speed and a fiery forecheck. Then, they lifted their foot off the gas pedal which allowed the Bruins to claw their way to the dominant position.
Housley said his team choice to play a complicated, high risk game rather than keeping it simple.
“It’s just a choice, to me,” Housley said after the loss to Boston.
“I think all the intentions, they mean well from our group. But they have to recognize the situation. If you’re going against a three-on-three or a two-on-two, this league is too good. You’re not going to beat guys one-on-one too many times, so you have to take what’s available, and that’s getting the puck behind.
“That’s all Boston did tonight. When they were through the rush, they put pucks behind us and went to work, and that’s all we got to do.”
In the end, the Bruins were the better team at 5v5 and on the powerplay.
There were plenty of coaching moments in the shutout loss for Rasmus Dahlin and company.
Jack Eichel made his debut as the Sabres’ captain. At 21 years of age, Eichel became the youngest captain in Sabres history, passing Jim Schoenfeld, who served as the team’s captain as a 23-year-old in the 1975-76 season.
Dahlin (18 years, 175 days) became the second-youngest player ever to appear in a game with the Sabres, behind only fellow No. 1 pick Pierre Turgeon (18 years, 41 days on October 8, 1987 vs. Minnesota).
Dahlin skated 22:37 TOI in his NHL debut last night, which is the highest TOI for a Sabres player in his NHL debut. Dahlin started conservatively and gained more confidence as the game unfolded. Dahlin was better in the second half of the game than he was in the first thirty minutes.
Dahlin TOI by period:
P1: 6:55 TOI
P2: 8:05 TOI
P3: 7:37 TOI
5v5: 21:36 TOI
PP: 1:01 TOI
PK: 0:00 TOI
The Sabres went 0-1 on the powerplay. Had they skates harder against Boston, they would have earned more powerplay opportunitues against the road weary Bruins who were playing on back to back nights.
Seven Sabres players made their regular-season debuts against Boston:
Patrik Berglund, Rasmus Dahlin, Carter Hutton, Conor Sheary, Jeff Skinner, Vladimir Sobotka and Tage Thompson
Having 33% of your roster turnover from one season to next is a lot of players in new roles on a new team. I’m okay with the Sabres having a clunker against Boston because of so many new faces in the starting lineup.
It marked the second-most new players the Sabres have ever dressed in a season-opener, trailing only the nine players who made their Sabres debuts on October 10, 2015 vs. Tampa Bay (Carlo Colaiacovo, Jack Eichel, Cody Franson, Chad Johnson, Evander Kane, David Legwand, Robin Lehner, Jamie McGinn and Ryan O’Reilly).
Carter Hutton was fantastic in goal. He kept his team in the game and gave them a chance.
As a I see it, Eichel and the top six forwards didn’t pay a physical price to get into the scoring areas. The Bruins clogged the middle of the ice for 200 feet. The Sabres forwards were forced to shoot from the perimeter.
The Sabres will get back to work today. They have a lot of hockey to play in the next two weeks.
Buffalo will host the NY Rangers in a game they should win on home ice on Saturday night. They will host the Vegas Knights on Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday afternoon.
Then, the Sabres will stab westward for six games in eight nights beginning Tuesday night in Denver against the Avs.
Phil Housley assembled his team for practice on Friday morning.
Center Vlad Sobotka is absent. Is he injured? Not sure. Perhaps he was shaken up in the fight he had with Charlie McAvoy in the late going on Thursday night.
I’m intrigued to see newcomer Remie Elie skate on line three with Casey Mittelstadt and Tage Thompson.
Elie, a gritty winger with a scoring touch, was claimed off waivers from Dallas on Wednesday.
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