Despite the roller coaster play, Seth Appert’s pinch-hit for under-the-weather coach Don Granato and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen’s goaltending got the Sabres an OT win.
BUFFALO — As up-and-down and frustrating as the Buffalo Sabres have been this season, they’re never a dull team.
Saturday’s rematch with the Columbus Blue Jackets was an important one, pride-wise, for the Sabres after they were embarrassed by Columbus 9-4 over a week ago. Even more it was important after they’d laid a couple of eggs on special teams against Boston on the 27th in a 4-1 loss.
The Sabres in the midst of all kinds of issues and were presented with another one on Saturday as head coach Don Granato, who’d been dealing with some variety of seasonal sickness the past few days, was ill enough to be unable to coach the game against Columbus. Sabres GM Kevyn Adams opted to bring in Rochester Americans head coach Seth Appert to fill in for Granato so as to allow the Sabres assistants to stick to their roles and not upend the rest of the staff from their duties.
Despite the potentially ominous signs that bringing the AHL coach up to sub in for the sick NHL coach, wouldn’t you know it wound up working out for at least a night.
The Sabres were able to overcome a brilliant goaltending performance by Blue Jackets starter Daniil Tarasov and another disappointing performance from their own power play to pull off a 3-2 come-from-behind win.
“Today was just trying to get here and trying to keep it as smooth as possible,” Appert said. “I really didn’t have enough time to think about my first NHL game. We’re just trying to make it as smooth, with Donny being sick, as possible so the staff and the players could be in the right mindset and there would be no disruption for them to try and win the game tonight.”
That there was as little disruption as possible with the play on the ice was maybe the biggest surprise.
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There were plenty of signs of the Sabres we’ve been accustomed to watching being out there Saturday night. They allowed the game’s first goal yet again, this one coming with 12.1 seconds left in the first after the Sabres were unable to clear the zone and Damon Severson cashed in on a loose puck in front.
The Sabres came out of the first intermission on fire and forced Columbus to make a turnover of their own that led to Jack Quinn scoring his third goal in five games since returning from a torn Achilles’ tendon. With momentum on their side, the Sabres went to the power play and were once again afflicted by all the same issues they’ve been having. The only difference this time with the power play groups came from Owen Power and Rasmus Dahlin switching units. Power led the group with Tage Thompson, Casey Mittelstadt, Jeff Skinner, and Alex Tuch and Dahlin joined the really young group of Quinn, JJ Peterka, Dylan Cozens, and Zach Benson.
Each group struggled to gain the zone and set up their attack and ultimately when the power play ended and the Blue Jackets cleared the zone, a Justin Danforth one-on-one against Dahlin turned into a 2-on-1 with Adam Fantilli racing out of the box and ultimately scoring despite a nice play from Luukkonen to try and break the play up as it got in close to the net.
Things could’ve gone sideways right away after that when Peyton Krebs was whistled for boarding, but the Sabres penalty kill did what it could not do against Boston and prevented the Jackets from scoring.
The Sabres have classically folded up this season when allowing a go-ahead goal and the Jackets getting a power play right after they’d gone ahead set the table for Sabres frustration to boil over once again and let the game get out of hand. Instead, the penalty kill better resembled the way it played earlier this season when they had one of the better kills in the league.
“What really flipped it on the bench in the second was the penalty kill,” Appert said. “I thought that penalty kill mid-, late-second period – whenever that was – was just full of life and energy, and it was smothering in feel. (We) didn’t give up many chances, had pressure on the puck, and the guys, the bench drew a lot of life from that. So I thought that was a big turning point in the game for us.”
Despite the Sabres ending the second period down 2-1 and outshooting Columbus 28-13, frustration would’ve been easy to fall back on. But with the Blue Jackets having played 22 hours ago and the Sabres having had two days of practice leading into Saturday’s game, the time to push was now and they were doing that well enough throughout the game already, a message Appert was quick to stress to the team during intermission.
“In between periods, Apps was so pretty funny,” Casey Mittelstadt said. “He’s like, ‘I haven’t been here, but it seems to me like you guys are playing great, so just keep going.’ Yeah, that’s what we did.”
Keeping a tight team loose like that at this point of the year can be hard, but necessary at times. Fortunately, with Appert running the show tonight (and he’ll do it again Sunday in Ottawa) he’s pressed into the situation as an outside guy with a lot of inside knowledge, so he too isn’t wound up as tightly as the players.
The Sabres outshot the Jackets again in the third, this time 12-7, and it was Mittelstadt who tied the game with a snapper after a drop pass from Benson. It was just one goal, but one they needed to force overtime.
In OT, the Sabres controlled the puck for most of the period, although Columbus did get one opportunity with a shot that sailed wide with Luukkonen challenging aggressively. Ultimately it was Skinner who buried a one-timer past Tarasov for the 3-2 win.
“I think those games, you just have to stick with it and find an extra gear,” Skinner said. “If you’re not getting a bounce or it’s not going for you, you’ve got to create it yourself.”
Appert had a lot of experience with many players in the Sabres lineup from coaching them in Rochester (or in Mattias Samuelsson’s position since Appert’s time with USA Hockey). With Quinn and Peterka, there was a lot of experience there with Appert and with Quinn back and reunited with Peterka and Cozens, that trio was apparent and threatening all game long.
“There is a comfort level with guys you’ve coached before,” Appert said. “JJ and Jack, amongst others, were big parts of a lot of success that we’ve had in Rochester both regular season and playoffs.
“Jack texted me today and said, ‘Count on the fact 22 won’t be sleepwalking tonight.’ That was a little famous banter he and I had with a little bit of a shouting match with each other in Rochester. When you coach players as young as they were when I had them… you just go through a lot together. You really do. You go through a lot of adversity, they’re away from home sometimes for the first time. They’re failing for the first time in their hockey career. You go through a lot together and I think any time you go through shared adversity together and you come out the other side, there’s a closeness and a bond that you have that stays there.”
Appert getting to work with all of these guys he once had all over again provided a level of comfort, but what’s more than that, he’s gotten to jump into this seeing one of the Sabres best lines being reunited and thriving.
Shots and shot attempts were lopsided in Buffalo’s favor all game long and each of their forward lines put up some big fancy stats, but the Peterka-Cozens-Quinn line had 20 attempts for versus seven against at 5-on-5 and an expected goals-for of 79.5 percent.
“First off, it’s a ton of fun to be back and playing,” Quinn said. “I’m obviously having a lot of success with a (few) goals and I think it’s an exciting feeling knowing I’m playing at a good level coming back from injury.”
This season—and granted it’s five games worth of action since Quinn’s come back—when these three have played together it’s been to the Sabres benefit. At 5-on-5, they’ve had 65.9 percent of shot attempts-for and 72.3 percent of expected goals-for. Keep in mind that’s in just over 41 minutes together at 5-on-5 so it’s a small sample, but it’s a very good one.
“We love playing together,” Quinn said of playing with Peterka and Cozens. “We want to have a lot of success so we’re bringing a lot of work ethic and compete every night to try and bring our best for the team.”
With those three together again after such a long time apart and Quinn coming back from a terrible injury, it’s a jolt the Sabres desperately needed in their lineup.
“I don’t know what to say really, it’s just exciting,” Quinn said. “When we got put together, we were really excited. I think we didn’t know how it was going to be right off the bat, but we knew we were going to get to our game. Whether it took a game or two or five, we were going to get there and luckily, we got there pretty quick.”