New Look Sabres: Preseason GM 2 - PIT
Buffalo Sabres win 3-2. I think… that is because I don’t recognize this team in Blue and Gold. They are too good. They got my energy up on a random ass Tuesday night. Is this what a good team feels like? This preseason game featured Penguins star Jake Guentzel and basically no one else. The Sabres, who are in their second preseason game to the Pens first, had a lot more probable regular season starters in their lineup including Rasmus Dahlin and Jack Eichel. It makes sense they dominated this game. They should. When it comes to assessing competition, generally speaking but also in the preseason, it’s always helpful to get a feel for what the other team is going through. One Evgeni Malkin, or Geno as the bros say, has expressed a frustration along with the rest of their leaders’ core with how their season ended in May. Perhaps this means the Pens don’t look like they could miss the playoffs until March this season. Maybe they have a fire we haven’t seen yet. They didn’t in this game (LOL) but I thought it was worth pondering for future reference and all that bullshit.
Rasmus Ristolainen dropped a wicked butt check to touch off a last five minutes of the first period that were chippy as fuck. The Sabres did look poor on the powerplays, at one point getting a five-on-three advantage. But they were bad because too many guys wanted to shoot: Dahlin, Eichel and Skinner were all on the ice. After that powerplay was over a bouncing puck went off Vladimir Sabotka into the goal in the dying minutes of the first. That was positive puck luck for a guy who got some good shots throughout this game. The Sabres are crashing the net now. They did in Columbus last night and they did it again tonight. Oh, the novelty! Jake McCabe scored a goal from Evan Rodrigues while falling on his ass. Who needs Ryan O’Reilly’s falling goals when we got Jake McCabe’s? Fight me, hockey dads. With the next goal the Sabres scored I had to remind myself this Pens team was basically Olli Matta and the Wheeling Nailers. Captain Jack (ahem) Eichel, sorry not sorry: got the puck way back in the defensive zone, skated through the neutral zone and did not take a stride from the blue line into a wicked deke out goal. It was a textbook Jack Robert Eichel goal. Yum. Is it October yet? The Third period was a bit scarier: Will O’Neill and Juuso Riikola scored a goal each in the last five to get your Sabres butthole clenching muscles ready for the regular season. Riikola. I’ve double checked. That name is spelled right. Hmm, well those two guys are evidently not starters for Pittsburgh and were very happy to score. God bless, I just got to keep reminding myself this is Preseason. The Sabres have not improved closing games out yet.
The Buffalo Sabres are a new team. I talked a little too big on twitter but this team is different than the one we knew. I know it’s the preseason and a whole different switch flips in NHL players’ minds in October but I already have the evidence of a new look Sabres team here. Carter Hutton alone changes the “confidence from the back” dynamic. The guy poke checked a puck away from a Penguin that was skating behind his net in the first period. That’s a nice trick but watch the game and you saw the guy had no quit. He cleared and played the puck like I haven’t seen a Sabres goalie do well in years. Hutton’s shutout (and Wedgewood’s very not shutout) play in this game might be my secondary note. There was passing and a transition game to the Buffalo side in this game that I simply do not recognize. Transition used to be something only Jack Eichel had; now, somehow, this team is not getting pushed around. They’re picking up loose pucks and returning to the offensive zone like they got something to prove. There were a lot of the big boys in this game and yet the secondary contributions were endless. Lawrence Pilut scored an assist in this game. Rasmus Asplund didn’t make his way onto the boxscore but he was on fire this game hungry like a wolf. Phil Housley talked after the game like he was disappointed. The two goals given up at the end aside, this game was not the ugliest game the Sabres played this calendar by a longshot, in fact it was pretty great. That means that Housley is talking that way because he has his system in place. He saw what we saw if not more. He knows the good and the bad from this game and he knows this team showed more good tonight than most games last season. He’s just making fine tunes to the message now. Phil Housley is a Hall of Fame defenseman and he’s now coming into his own as an NHL coach.
Speaking of defenseman, there is a pretty solid argument to be made from a Sabres perspective that this defensive lineup on its own was better than anything iced last year. That is in some part the Dahlin effect: this was the big guy’s first game in a Sabres uniform in Key Bank Center. He said he was a little nervous in postgame. Naturally, but I sure hope he is allowed to play his game. Poor deployment floats around that arena as if Dan Blysma is a ghost. Erik Karlsson is one of Dahlin’s comparables and that guy dragged a team that was actively working against him to within one goal of the Stanley Cup Final… with a broken foot! Hmm, let’s not make too many comparisons that way. Tonight’s top two defensive pairings could go into the regular season dandy: Ristolainen – Scandella, Dahlin – McCabe. Until Dahlin has his NHL legs this will do. Don’t @ me about Bogosian. I won’t participate in that name calling. The Sabres are 2-0 in the preseason going into a home and home series with the Toronto Maple Leafs and they look better than ever. I am so ready.
I am going to try some different stuff in these next two games against the Maple Leafs. Like player deployment in the preseason yours truly needs to experiment. Just like the O’Reilly trade “assets” we got are kicking ass, so I hope you’ll see the virtue of whatever this blog thingy is. Share it, Retweet it, comment! I would love to hear back from someone who is actually reading these who is also not me or my wife. Reach me on Tumblr or Twitter, I’m not picky. DM me on twitter if you want. I feel special when people DM me. Well anyway, get a load of these 2-0 Sabres. Sure beats living the Bills life right now, eh, Vontae Davis?
P.S. Good exits, eliminate second chances. These were the words quoted out of Brian Duff’s mouth after the game as if performing an exorcism of shite Sabres teams past. I share the sentiment that it ought to be this new team’s motto.
