The Buffalo Sabres’ 5-2 win against the Florida Panthers was a much-needed break from the stress brought about by the 0-3-0 start.
BUFFALO — It wasn’t exactly a must-win game for the Buffalo Sabres, but it wasn’t one they could afford to lose, either.
After going 0-3-0 to start the season, the mood and the vibes around the team were, to be blunt, rancid. They’d just come off a brutal 3-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings in the home opener on Thursday in which they corrected a lot of the things that went wrong in their second game against the New Jersey Devils in Prague, but a couple of mistakes and a defined lack of offense coupled with a stellar goaltending performance by Darcy Kuemper had the Sabres room frustrated/annoyed/pissed off… downright ornery.
Doing things right and not getting rewarded for it or having those good things get overshadowed by bad plays, bad mistakes or bad luck is how things went and when events are going like that, ain’t no one going to be happy about it.
Facing the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers on Saturday night brought a foreboding air to the situation. But the Panthers are without captain Aleksander Barkov for the next 2-3 weeks (lower body) and Matthew Tkachuk’s illness kept him out of action on Saturday. Those absences coupled with backup goalie Spencer Knight getting the start meant it was time for the Sabres to get off the schneid and boy did they.
A 5-2 win got the Sabres into the win column for the first time this season and all the while scored two more goals in one game than they had in the previous three and at last, for a night, the sour feelings evaporated.
“I think it speaks volumes that the start we had, everything that kind of went on, and we stuck to it,” Sabres forward Jordan Greenway said. “I don’t want to go to last game, but we’ve been building our game. We’ve been pretty happy about how we’ve been playing overall. Of course, there’s things that we can do better to build, but it was good that we went through what we did. We’re learning from it and we’re becoming a really good team.”
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Even though the final score and how the Sabres cruised to victory in the third made it seem like an easy win, it didn’t exactly start out the way they were hoping when Panthers defenseman Nate Schmidt gave Florida a 1-0 lead in the first.
Schmidt’s goal was a bit too reminiscent of breakdowns in the previous three games and when a defenseman is able to cruise in from the blue line and snap one by the goalie, no one looks good. Whether it was the previous experience of going through such a misstep, the feeling of being fed up with having such things occur, or both, the Sabres righted the ship thanks to Greenway.
Greenway’s all-effort grind around the net and backhand over a sprawled-out Knight tied the game up with under four minutes to go in the first. Tage Thompson put the Sabres ahead to stay just 41 seconds later after great set-up passes by Connor Clifton and Alex Tuch to spring him up the right side of the ice. He let loose a hard shot that leaked through Knight that made it 2-1.
“It’s a great response,” Thompson said. “We felt comfortable. There was no panic in our game. I think even in the third, a two-goal lead against the defending Cup champions, they know how to claw their way back into games, and I thought we really didn’t give them a whole lot.”
The game itself was rather open in the first with 5-on-5 shot attempts piled up in Buffalo’s favor at 17-16, but with the missed shots and blocks, the Panthers had a 10-6 edge in shots on goal. With the lead in hand and blood in the water, the Sabres stepped on it in the second period with a 23-8 shot attempt advantage and 12-4 in shots on goal.
All of that offensive action got the Panthers to scramble a bit in their own zone and Knight struggled to keep up the pace and track where everything went. Two separate scrambles around the goal led to goals from defensemen Henri Jokiharju and Mattias Samuelsson and a 4-1 lead. Sam Bennett’s power play goal with under two minutes to go in the second caused unease with fans (two-goal leads being dangerous and all), but the Sabres had it all under control.
“(We) really they didn’t give them anything, didn’t give up any big opportunities and with them putting risk in their game, we still have, three or four really good opportunities to score, so put a lot of work into it and it was great to see everybody get rewarded,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said.
It was just the kind of performance the Sabres had to have and coming away with a win against a team they’ve struggled against historically the past few years makes it even better for them. Even without Barkov, Tkachuk, or Sergei Bobrovsky in goal, a win is a win and the Panthers are still the defending champions. If you find yourself pooh-poohing this win because of those factors, consider what the reaction by everyone would’ve been if they lost.
Takeaways
Greenway’s play to start the season has been impressive. When looking over the roster and when we considered the speed in which Ruff wants this team to play at, there was concern for how that would work with the big forward. Speed isn’t his game but playing smart and physical is. Perhaps that should’ve been considered a bit more when thinking about how Ruff’s teams historically have been set up and performed.
Greenway has been an ideal fit in his role on the third line with Ryan McLeod and Jason Zucker and he’s continued to play outstanding on the penalty kill. We saw a very good version of him last season despite all the dour things about the team but we’re seeing an even better version of him early on this year. He’s playing with the kind of intensity and swagger that got the Panthers all kinds of frustrated later on in the third period to the point where he was jawing with the Florida bench as the linesman tried to prevent a fracas from occurring.
When a player with Greenway’s size and physicality is playing with that sort of attitude, it’s the kind of thing that can rub off on the rest of the team.
“Confidence is a great thing to have, and I think especially from a win like this, our team should definitely have some confidence,” Greenway said. “For me specifically, it’s always nice to have confidence, for sure, but it comes from doing the right things. Everyone doing the right things, playing the right way, so I think a lot of guys are playing with confidence right now.”
It became noticeable early in the third period that neither Zach Benson nor Beck Malenstyn saw a lot of ice time. Benson’s shifts disappeared late in the second period and Malenstyn played just two shifts in the first period and didn’t see the ice again until midway through the third when he and Benson saw one shift together with Dylan Cozens.
Ruff opted for a 11/7 lineup against Florida with Sam Lafferty sitting out while defenseman Dennis Gilbert made his Sabres debut. In doing that, Ruff said he was committed to rolling three lines all game and with Benson not factoring into the game, Peyton Krebs took his place on the first line with Thompson and Tuch and had a strong performance, although part of that change had some underlying issues as well.
“I think during the game you look at who was going really good, (Krebs) was going good,” Ruff said. “And I thought, again, if Thompson got kicked out of the faceoff circle, I liked his bite once he got inside the dot. I thought his puck tenacity – I don’t, I mean this is just my opinion, I don’t think Benson’s 100 percent. He’s playing, but for me he doesn’t look 100 percent yet. So, I just thought we’d give Krebs a look there. I thought he was really good tonight.”
The Sabres have a few days before they hit the road for three games in four nights in Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Chicago so the lower-body issue Benson is dealing with can have a bit of a break to get better, but with him hurting and J-J Peterka missing another game with a concussion, it highlights how quickly things can get difficult in keeping the skill game high.
Fortunately, the line of Cozens, Jiri Kulich, and Jack Quinn had a bit of a redemption after a difficult game against L.A. At 5-on-5 they had the best shot attempt percentage of any line (16 to 8 for 66.7 percent) and outshot the opposition 8-3. Their 88.8 percent expected goals-for was also tops among Sabres trios. Kulich’s confidence is growing each game and if Benson has to come out while Peterka returns, the Sabres can feel confident that they’ll be able to keep up their attack.
Now that the Sabres are back on the right side of the ledger, seeing if they can win two in a row is the next target. Considering it took them until January last season to win consecutive games, doing so in mid-October now would be a revelation of sorts.
No, I don’t believe in jinxes, why do you ask?