First off, congratulations to Sabres winger Jason Pominville who will be playing in his 1,000th NHL game tonight. Not bad for the rather slight (5'11" 180 lb.) native of Repentigny, Quebec who was drafted 55th overall by Buffalo in the 2001 NHL Entry Draft and was also waived by the team at the end of training camp prior to the 2005-06 season.
The Sabres were lucky in that no one claimed him and he went on to score 185 goals and 456 points in 578 games for Buffalo before being traded to the Minnesota Wild. Pominville spent four seasons in Minnesota before he was traded back to Buffalo in 2017. He'll join the 1,000-game club tonight as the Sabres take on the Senators in Ottawa. Pominville enters tonight's game with 282 goals and 706 points in 999 NHL games.
Buffalo is off to a very solid start to this NHL season posting a 6-4-2 record through the month of October. A terrible second period at Columbus two games ago almost sunk them but they managed to comeback to get a point against the Blue Jackets and they snared a point vs. Calgary in their last game for their only two overtime losses of he season thus far. Of note, the Sabres wasted a brilliant performance by goalie Carter Hutton on Tuesday at home against the Flames. They blew a 1-0 lead with less than a minute to go in the third period, failed on the powerplay right off the bat in overtime then allowed the Calgary to win it. Although 7-4-1 looks a lot better, the team this year is better and definitively more watchable compared to what we saw last season and it shows in the overall team stats.
Buffalo is one of 11 teams with six wins placing them smack-dab in the middle of the league. In looking back at where they finished the past five seasons listed here, that's a good start to the season.
October is one of those months were there are aberrations aplenty and the further we get into the season the more things level out. Buffalo is middle-of-the-road in most categories save for the goals area where they're lagging in shots/game (24th in the league,) goals/game (26th,) 5v5 goals (25th) and goal-differential (22nd.) The Sabres have balanced out those deficiencies somewhat on the defensive side of the equation with league rankings solidly in the mid-teens or so.
Buffalo has had an unsteady start to the season which included a five-game, 10-day Pacific Division road trip and there have been a lot of inconsistencies. As we move through the next month or two this edition of the Buffalo Sabres will begin to reveal itself and hopefully we'll see them light the lamp a little more on offense while also tightening things up more on defense.
Until then, however, we'll leave you with Pominville's most famous goal--his series-clinching short-handed, overtime winner against the Senators in Ottawa on May 13, 2006 (via jzambon):
Buffalo Sabres 2018-19 Team Stats (League Rankings)...(Leader):
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