Sabre Rattling: Sabre-Toothless Tiger Slayers

Well, for the first time this year the boys from Buffalo managed to find a way to beat the Florida Panthers with a 5-3 victory tonight at the HSBC arena. I'm not sure what it is but the Panthers seem to have our number. There are certain teams that other teams just can't beat and it's troublesome to me that a team like Florida, who on most nights look like also-rans, always plays like world-beaters against the Sabres.

To their credit they always attempt to out-work and frustrate the Buffalo breakout, constantly pressuring our defense into coughing up the puck, and for the most part it seems to work like a champ, that coupled with Luongo's normally stellar goaltending usually means we walk off the ice with our heads down wondering what we have to do to beat these guys. Tonight's game for the most part was no exception to this. For the first 10 minutes it looked like a carbon copy of every other Florida game this year... sticks everywhere, the Panthers trapping, the Sabres frustrated and jittery putting weak shots into Luongo's mid-section and we're one mistake away from the wheels coming off.

But, unlike the other games we've played against the Cats this season the bounces seemed to go our way early and little things that normally hurt us didn't. Van Ryn cranking one off the pipe and Dumont's lacrosse-style goal in the 1st period set the tone for the evening. Though, to me, Ryan Miller looked a little uncomfortable in net and that was a concern for most of the evening until the Sabres put the game out of reach with Vanek's wrap-around that made it 4-2 in the 3rd.

Once we got the Panthers to open up a little bit after Dumont's goal we started to take the game to them and a very pretty play by Max and Roy to set up Jiri Novotny's 1st NHL goal made it feel as if we'd finally solved the Florida trap/jinx. But, still the Cats are well-coached and are spunky (at least against Buffalo) and clawed their way back to a 2-2 tie with some old-fashioned hard work
by, of all people, Chris Gratton and John Sim.

There were way too many turnovers and bad neutral zone decisions for a game that, on paper and on the scoreboard, we seemed to dominate. It took a determined effort by Thomas Vanek on two separate occasions to turn nothing plays into seeing-eye goals to get us this win. In both cases Vanek made the puck do things it shouldn't have. He played the 2nd half of this game like a guy with a mission and if he can ring that kind of intensity on a greater percentage of shifts...? Wow!

Notes from the Marginal Underground:

Jiri Novotny is a well-coached player. He always has his stick in a place to make a play, both offensively or defensively. He's always ready to receive a pass or break one up. I like what I've seen from him so far in the past two games.
Roy, Max and Vanek were excellent tonight as they attacked the Florida neutral zone with speed and determination, mixing up their entries and coming at the Florida defense in waves.
Pyatt's tussle with Montador was great as well. Pyatt went out of his way to avoid Luongo while driving the net and paid for it by having Montador ride him off face-washing and being stupid. Pyatt dropped the gloves and very quickly ended the altercation Montador started. In Chainshot's words from the other day on HF, "Pyatt's a BEAST!"
Tallinder and Lydman were having a tough night moving the puck out of the zone. The Panther fore check was giving them both fits all night. Neither was comfortable with how little time they were being given to make decisions. It didn't help matters that too often our forwards were cheating away from them reducing their safe options.
Florida's penalty killing was the most aggressive I've seen this year and lacking our top talent on the PP (Briere, Connolly, Hecht) our response wasn't strong enough to counter it. Good job by the Cats to not be awed by the Sabres PP and skate aggressively.

All in all, a solid win but also a toothless one as well. Even while up by 2 goals late in the 3rd the Panthers still seemed to be able to take control of the game at will, which is, of course, a credit to them, but frustrating for us.

Tomorrow's game against Carolina has all the potential to be unbelievably ugly. No rest, travel, early start, 3rd game in 4 nights, major injuries, an excellent opponent. I'll be shocked if we skate with the Canes for more than 20 minutes.

Ta,

Comments

Hey.... don't sell your team short. It's pretty apparent from our ugly loss to the Pens on Friday that six of our seven Olympians (Staal excluded), and our coach are already mentally in Torino. The rest of the team is already mentally on vacation. We looked like an ECHL team on Friday. Seriously.

Either way, I'll consider myself lucky to have the privilege of seeing our boys off, as four Hurricanes players will be donning the red white and blue. It should be a lot of fun no matter what.

Posted by: David Lee | Saturday, 11 February 2006 at 10:45 PM