Tuesday’s game against the New York Islanders had a lot of familiarity to it, both because of the opponent, the play style of the game, and ultimately the result.
Final
Buffalo wins 4-3
The Game
During the Sabres practice on Monday, all signs pointed towards the return of two players to the lineup: forward Jordan Greenway and defenseman Michael Kesselring. They each took regular turns with their line or defense partner, and everything seemed in order for them both.
There was a wrinkle late in the afternoon on Monday, however, when the Sabres recalled Zach Metsa from Rochester. Metsa had just helped buoy the Americans’ playoff hopes by helping them win two out of three games over the weekend and here he was coming back to Buffalo after a classic AHL weekend schedule. And then there he was in warmups on Tuesday with Logan Stanley on the third pairing. Kesselring’s return gets postponed yet again, but Metsa’s ever-steady play has won him favor with Lindy Ruff and the results are very hard to argue.
As for Greenway, he did make his return following a procedure to finally help him out after difficulty from multiple surgeries on his midsection. He’s a refreshed player and looks quick and confident again and while some fans grump about how he plays, as a defensive presence, physical player and penalty killer, he checks a lot of boxes for what playoff teams need.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen started for the second straight game and it’s a kind of test run to see how that would go and an indication that he’s got the lead on being the starter for Game 1 of the playoffs when that time comes. But a start against the Islanders who just got crushed at home by the Pittsburgh Penguins 8-2 the night before was going to be the right kind of test. There was no way the Isles would allow Ilya Sorokin (who got the call to start for the second night in a row) to get hung out to dry. They’re a team in a playoff battle themselves and Sorokin’s been one of the best goalies in the league. They were going to play hard, make it difficult to get room around the ice to create and look to frustrate the bejeezus out of the Sabres.
Special teams proved to be the jumpstart for both teams’ offenses. Jack Quinn’s power play goal late in the first period got Buffalo the lead. It was a superb play in which he had a lot of room to skate towards the net and attacked it with speed. He made a subtle move on his edges that locked up Islanders defenseman Ryan Pulock and that gave him a lane to wire a shot past Sorokin.
Late in the second after Mattias Samuelsson was guilty of tossing the puck out of play, Callum Ritchie cashed in on the power play after a series of tic-tac-toe passes from Bo Horvat and Brayden Schenn. The quick movement provided a real tip-your-cap moment for how well it worked, but a tie game with just under three minutes to go in the second period changed the mood a bit.
That mood was altered less than a minute later when Anders Lee hit Josh Norris from behind near the Islanders bench. Norris’s face bounced off the rounded glass at the end of the bench and bloodied him. Lee wasn’t penalized, but the Sabres were hot about seeing Norris hurting even though the play itself was mildly innocuous.
The third period started off with Lee and Sam Carrick having an animated discussion before the puck dropped as the Sabres were still quite sore about the hit on Norris. Once the puck was dropped, Lee and Carrick squared off for a fight. It was a noble act by Carrick to defend a teammate, but squaring up with a physical specimen like Lee is rough. Even though Lee isn’t a known fighter, he’s still 6’3” 234 pounds of muscle. Carrick isn’t small, mind you, he’s 6’ 202 pounds himself and experienced enough at scrapping.
But things can go wrong in fights and something went wrong here as Carrick was injured and left the game appearing to favor his left arm. As a person with more than enough life experience with shoulder injuries, that sure looked like one the way he carried himself leaving the ice. His addition to the team at the deadline has been a brilliant one and his role on the fourth line has been played exceptionally. He’s lived up to the reputation as a great faceoff guy and despite his success, that area is still a problem for the Sabres.
“Really big step up by Ricky there,” Krebs said. “We look after each other and he did that there. That was a massive fight. On the bench, all the guys were saying we want to win that game for him. It was a big momentum builder. I feel for him after that. He put his heart and soul into this team right away. It sucks to see him get injured like that, but we wanted to do that for him and now we’re going to continue to do that.”
Following the Carrick fight and injury, Carson Soucy took his second penalty of the game and this time it turned into a goal against when Norris slipped a pass to Tage Thompson in the slot and he snapped a quick shot that beat Sorokin for a 2-1 lead. Seeing the power play click a bit more often is almost enough to get fans to get off their backs about it. Almost. But looking at how they’re moving all five players around and creating different looks shows they know they’ve been a bit stagnant and have worked to change it. There’s a little more to it than that, too.
“I think ever since we’ve kind of moved that power play over to the other side and operated off of that side, it’s still opened up tighter opportunities for Tommer,” Ruff said. “The downhill goal by Quinny was a good goal. There’s just different places that Thompson can get to, and I thought he got to a good spot. You put him in a spot like that with his wrist shot, and he’s as good as it comes at scoring. I thought our power play looked good.”
The 2-1 lead was in check for a little more than the next 10 minutes of game time until Anders Lee looked to fire a pass across the crease to Bo Horvat on the other side of the net and rather than it finding his stick, it found the skate of Owen Power and got past Luukkonen to tie the game with 6:21 left in the third. A freak goal turned the game against the Sabres when they faced Boston a week ago, but that “been there, done that” experience helped them against the Islanders.
It was 3:20 after Lee’s goal when Alex Tuch had his best shift of the game. He tracked down two different Islanders attempts to get up the ice with a tenacious back check and then came away with the puck to roar into the offensive zone. With the puck on his stick, he circled the net and then slipped a backhand pass into open space for Krebs to tee up on and beat Sorokin to give Buffalo a 3-2 lead.
“You could tell that shift Tuchy had his legs and he was feeling it,” Krebs said. “He had a lot of speed there doing his thing that he usually does taking away and I kind of had a feeling he was going to throw it in there and just had to be in the right spot at the right time.”
Krebs has been such an important player this season. The versatility he’s had to develop over the years after coming over from Vegas and being a first-round pick in 2019 is impressive. First-round centers are meant to be point producers and not necessarily guys who grind out shifts and play in a way that drives opponents crazy, but the offensive smarts have never left him and the way he’s developed into an aggravating defensive presence as well as a puck hound has taken precedence in his game.
Meanwhile, Krebs can still make plays to create goals or just score them on his own. It’s why he’s earned a spot on the top line with Thompson and Tuch and it’s why Ruff is just as comfortable with him there as he is on the third or fourth line when situations change. In Ruff’s dream lineup, having a guy like that on every line would be incredible. They’ve got two of them with the other being Zach Benson.
With a 3-2 lead and just 3:01 left to play, Isles coach Patrick Roy made sure to get Sorokin off with enough time for the Isles to try and get the goal back and maybe steal a point. Instead, Bo Byram buried an empty netter from behind his own goal line (officially 181 feet away) to make it 4-2 and put the game away. Brayden Schenn’s goal with one second left only slightly dampened the spirits of the fans who were already on their feet and cheering another victory and another stellar performance from Luukkonen with 25 saves including a second period save on Lee when he was awarded a penalty shot.
The win gave the Sabres 100 points for the season for the first time since 2009-2010. It’s the 10th time in franchise history they’ve hit 100 points in a season. The win was also the 2,000th in franchise history. It’s a lot of big, round numbers for this team who’s on the precipice of putting all the talk of a decade-and-a-half long playoff drought to bed for good.
“(Reaching 100 points) means we’re doing stuff right,” Luukkonen said. “It means our way of playing is working, the work we do every day is working. There’s a lot of people in this room who have been here for a long time. I think it’s a reward for all of the work we’ve put in.”
Standings
On top of winning and dropping the magic number by two, the out-of-town scoreboard broke exactly how the Sabres wanted to try and hasten clinching a playoff berth. Each of Ottawa, Detroit and Philadelphia lost in regulation. Philadelphia doesn’t have a chance to win the tiebreaker over Buffalo (regulation wins) and Detroit’s loss coupled with Buffalo’s win made it so the Red Wings can’t do that either. Only Ottawa could still do that, but those two face each other in Kanata on Thursday.
The maximum number of points Ottawa, Detroit and Philadelphia can get are 102 and with Buffalo sitting at 100, their magic number is three to clinch a playoff spot since if Ottawa won out in regulation and Buffalo wound up tied with them in the end, the Senators would win that tiebreak. Confused yet? Good!
Thursday night sees the Sabres face Ottawa while Detroit and Philadelphia square off for the second time in a week. Any kind of win by the Sabres on Thursday night would clinch a playoff spot regardless of what happens between the Flyers and Red Wings. That would give them 102 points while Ottawa’s maximum possible point total would be 100. The winner of Detroit-Philadelphia could still reach 102, but Buffalo has the tiebreaker over both teams.
If Buffalo loses to Ottawa… we’ll cross that bridge if we have to after that game, but winning cures all ills and failing that, they’ve got time on their side anyway. They’re a playoff team, they just have to make it official and then focus on trying to secure as much home ice as they can.
Speaking of which, the Canadiens took out Tampa Bay in regulation which is awkward. Yes, it keeps Montréal hot on their heels, but it also allowed Buffalo to hop over Tampa Bay for first in the Atlantic Division. Carolina won as well and also joined the 100-point club. The Habs have won six in a row and Cole Caufield is white hot. Winning the division might have to happen to make the first round a little less terrifying. Unfortunately for the Sabres, both the Lightning and Canadiens have a game in hand on them.
