Sabres talk and more
It’s been a little while so let’s get caught up a bit.
I was away for about a week tending to a family matter. I’ll share a bit more information on that now because things are in an excellent place.
My dad was hospitalized with pneumonia and with him being 76 years old and having grown up with not the greatest lungs, to call it a scary situation would be accurate. Fortunately, the doctors got a handle on things quickly with antibiotics and oxygen and he was released after a few days. He’s been home for about a week now and is even mostly off of the oxygen they sent him home with and he’s just about back to his normal self.
If you’ve never been in a situation to have family in health peril, you’re fortunate. It’s scary and life-shaking to witness. I’m beyond thankful to the doctors and specialists for helping get things turned around for my dad and to have him back dialed in on what’s going on with the Sabres again. He was never really a hockey fan while I was growing up, but working on this beat and Sabres games being regularly on TV back around Albany means he watches them a lot more and likes to see if he catches me, either visibly or by voice, during the postgame. It’s always great to get a text from him after the games with his take on it.
About the Sabres…
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When we wrote about practice a couple weeks back, I had that time circled as a moment to see how the team would do after being able to get actual on-ice time to work on things and if anything would change at all in the meantime. Since the schedule opened up a bit after Christmas, they’ve gone 5-4-0 which is about on par with how they’ve done all year long. They did mix in a two-game win streak in there for only the second time this season, so that was a positive sign, but their overall performance has been much stronger comparatively.
Thanks to Natural Stat Trick, we can see their 5-on-5 numbers are trending in a better direction, particularly with expected goals. A lot of the Corsi stuff gets out of whack thanks to score effects and of all the games since Christmas, their two worst ones were a 5-2 home loss to Seattle in which they seemed to stop fighting after the Kraken went up 3-2 in the second and a 1-0 home loss to Vancouver in which both Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Thatcher Demko played outstanding. A near mutual goalie’ing in that case, but one in which a mistake in coverage by Connor Clifton in front of the Sabres net resulted in the only goal of the game.
The road loss to Ottawa on New Year’s Eve was also a brutal one but one that’s proven to be a moment when things changed with how they’re handling goalie starts. Not only has Luukkonen played much better the past few weeks, but Devon Levi allowed four goals to the Senators, a couple of them not-so great to give up. Levi got starts on the road in Montréal (a brilliantly played game in his hometown) and in the loss to Seattle in which the goals allowed resembled his start in Ottawa a bit too closely.
Inconsistency in goal kneecapped the Sabres last season and the lack of having any of their goalies taking the opportunity to earn more starts are run with it crushed them. This season, Luukkonen is making sure to not repeat that mistake. He’s played excellent hockey, and it appears he’s settled down and locked in for the time being. Having Luukkonen playing well and the team in front of him learning to push the pace more often and just shoot the dang puck, it’s resulting in better games and more wins.
There’s the whole thing with the power play going on as well. It has looked more improved and, coincidence or not, it’s looked a bit better since Jeff Skinner went out of the lineup. Skinner won’t be gone much longer so the gains they’ve made on the man advantage, while encouraging, have to maintain when Skinner returns. Don Granato was quick to temper any kind of overwhelming positive talk about the power play after their 3-0 against San Jose when Alex Tuch got one at 5-on-4. I get it, it’s not close to being fully right yet, but gains have been noticed and that’s good. But that’s happened already earlier this season, too. Fool me once, etc.
The Sabres will need to string together wins in bigger chunks than they’ve gotten for me to even take the wild card situation into any sort of consideration but seeing them play better is equal parts encouraging and frustrating. Encouraging because, well, yeah, that’s obvious. Frustrating because same. But if this group can somehow get on a heater (I know, I know) that would go a long way for a multitude of reasons.