TORONTO – In what’s ever more starting to resemble hockey’s version of “Freaky Friday,” the Buffalo Sabres handling of the Toronto Maple Leafs by a 7-4 score on Tuesday night came complete with a masterwork performance from Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin.
While the rival Maple Leafs finished a five-game homestand 0-4-1 and fell eight points behind a playoff spot, the Sabres won for the 19th time in the past 23 games and held onto third place in the Atlantic Division while the Montréal Canadiens and Boston Bruins remained tied with them in points.
The Sabres looked faster, deeper, and more skilled all-around than the Maple Leafs, something that even as recently as a year ago would’ve been absurd to witness, never mind it being a fact. That it was Dahlin leading the way with a brilliant performance scoring his first career hat trick and adding two assists put the exclamation mark on it all.
“We’ve been playing solid hockey for a while now and we just kind of keep doing it,” Dahlin said. “We’re a really good team. We had some things we have to get better at too today, I feel like, so we got to keep grinding.”
It’s been a thing in the past for Sabres players to say they’re a good team at times and the results never really bore that out but saying it now can be backed up with the way they’re playing and stacking up wins on the regular. In the past, losses would pile up in bunches. Now they’re hiccups in between winning streaks of various lengths. It’s not athlete speak to say they’re good, it’s just a matter of fact right now. Being really good in the middle of the season only goes so far, and that’s something they’re well aware of.
“We’ve only got back to the race,” Dahlin said. “We still have lots of hockey left. I mean, we have a lot of things we have to get better at, too. That’s the exciting part. If you want to win in this league, it’s not going to be easy, so this is just the beginning.”
In what’s been a year from hell personally for Dahlin and his fiancée, Carolina, seeing him put up the kind of game that leaves fans stirring like that against a hated and reeling rival makes it even more incredible he’s not just able to even focus enough to play hockey but to excel at it.
“What he’s going through personally I can’t even imagine,” Tage Thompson said. “The fact that he’s here playing hockey and competing for us means the world to us and I think that just speaks to his character. How much he loves the team, how much he wants to win and he’s not just playing, he’s leading by example. I can’t say enough good things about him and obviously the mental strength you have to have to be able to do what he’s doing is pretty impressive.”
Dahlin scoring a hat trick made him the first Sabres defenseman to do it since Rasmus Ristolainen December 10, 2015 in Calgary and just the seventh defenseman in team history to accomplish the feat. The Sabres lost that game 4-3 when Johnny Gaudreau scored 55 seconds after Ristolainen completed the hat trick in the third period during a hopeful, yet lost, season for Buffalo.
Dahlin burying a shot into an empty net in Toronto to make it 7-4 and finish clearing out Scotiabank Arena during the hottest stretch of 23 games in team history carries a bit more weight.
“He said, ‘This is fun.’ He said, ‘I don’t even know how to act because I’ve never done this before,’” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “We know there’s a lot of hockey left, but I’m happy for him. This is a guy–and I’ve said this before–the young man’s gone through a lot, and I’m so happy for him that he’s getting rewarded for all the work and all the adversity that he’s faced. This has got to put a big smile on Carolina’s face, too.”
A Sabres team being a fun and good team is a foreign concept to fans everywhere, never mind just Sabres fans, but seeing them doing it and embracing what the race is in the division and the conference makes a lot of what this team is doing on the ice feel more authentic.
What’s more is that we saw earlier this season what it’s like when this team struggles and as familiar as it seemed then, it’s a complete departure from how they’ve been playing for the past two months.
“I think we just have a confident group right now,” Mattias Samuelsson said. “They score first or we get down a goal or two in a game, I don’t think there’s any panic or anything. We just keep going to work. I think we have a pretty talented group that can score goals, so just stick with the game plan. Keep hunting pucks, keep getting after the other team, and good things will come. I don’t think there’s really much panic in this room.”
The win and the emphatic nature of it along with Dahlin’s brilliance helped hide parts of the game that could lead to worry later on.
Starting goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen left the game shortly after allowing Auston Matthews’ goal that gave Toronto a 2-1 lead at 10:49 of the first period. Luukkonen left after a stop in play at 12:14 and went right to the room. Colten Ellis took over and reaped the benefits to get the win. Luukkonen made three saves on five shots while Ellis stopped 16 of 18. Ruff said Luukkonen will get looked at in Buffalo by team doctors on Wednesday.
Jordan Greenway looked like he would be ready to play at practice on Monday in Buffalo and skated in his usual place on the fourth line, but didn’t participate in morning skate or play against Toronto. He’s been load managed this year after having hernia surgery over the summer that didn’t quite go right.
“We may have to get him to see medical again,” Ruff said. “He hasn’t quite been responding to what we’ve been trying to do with him, so we just kept him out of the lineup tonight.”
With the Olympic break coming next week and two weeks of rest before things pick up again at the end of February, the timing might be ideal for Greenway to miss as little time as possible.