Mike Harrington: Sabres' growth comes not just in wins but in their all-around performance
"It was a full team game," captain Rasmus Dahlin said after the Sabres' 3-0 blanking of the Florida Panthers. "That's really what you need in this league to win."
That's two.
And for the Buffalo Sabres, it's more than just two wins in a row. it's two full-marks, all-over-the-ice presentations.
Good hockey teams show up every night and stack games, one after the other. Maybe they don't win them all but their effort and execution are pretty consistent. The players have an idea what the objectives are and the coaches know what they can expect from their team.
Sabres right wing Josh Doan, middle, scores on a deflection against Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky during the first period at KeyBank Center.
Derek Gee, Buffalo News
The last couple of years, the Sabres have been the antithesis of that. They've been an all-over-the-map team, and I can tell you firsthand they drove coach Don Granato as crazy at times as they've been doing to Lindy Ruff since he came back last season.
Sloppy special teams, spotty goaltending, poor puck management and ill-timed penalties have been the Sabres' hallmarks. They've combined to snuff out winning streaks and create the recipe for the kind of craters that have ruined seasons.
So the abject panic within the fan base and the circling-the-carcass mentality of some national hockey media after this year's 0-3 start were pretty understandable. But there's an easy way to silence the critics and create positive noise from the fans.
Show up and play hard-nosed hockey.
Witness Saturday's 3-0 blanking of the shell-of-the-Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers. You had to love it. Tough work along the walls and in front of the net. The first two Buffalo goals from Josh Doan, the kind of nose-to-the-grindstone player the Kevyn Adams-era Sabres have not had nearly enough of. A 32-save shutout from Alex Lyon, who has run with the goaltending job in the absence of Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen.
Two more power-play goals. A 7-for-7 day on the penalty kill, creating an NHL-leading 95.7% success rate for the season. Rasmus Dahlin getting completely under Brad Marchand's skin and Tage Thompson jumping Marchand when the Florida gnat attacked Dahlin after what was, truth be told, a pretty vicious cross-check that went undetected.
"It was a full team game," Dahlin said succinctly. "That's really what you need in this league to win."
After four assists in his season debut Wednesday against Ottawa, Zach Benson added another Saturday. Mattias Samuelsson, often a punching bag for the fan base, was a beast on the PK as he rang up 5:32 of short-handed ice time and combined with newcomer Conor Timmins (7:25) to keep things clear for Lyon. On one sequence, Samuelsson wiped out Anton Lundell below the goal line, swiped the puck and cleared it down the ice to kill a Panthers' foray.
Lyon's 32-save shutout included 15 saves when the Panthers had a man advantage. He's got a 2.43 goals-against average and .929 save percentage thus far, and suddenly has turned goaltending into the least of the Sabres' worries.
The Sabres lost the special teams battle so much last season. In this game, Lyon made four saves after Benson took a tripping penalty just nine seconds after the opening faceoff, and Doan scored two power-play goals to push the Sabres to 5 for 7 over the last two games.
"You make a few saves and sometimes it's a blessing in a way," said Lyon. "You never want to take penalties against a hard-working team like that ... but for sure we had good emotion and good mentality coming into the game."
Sabres goaltender Alex Lyon makes a save on a point-blank shot by Panthers defenseman Seth Jones, left, who's taken out of the play by Mattias Samuelsson.
Derek Gee, Buffalo News
I know what some of you are thinking: The way the beat-up Panthers look now, October feels like four years from their June triumph and not four months.
There's no Aleksander Barkov this season. No Matthew Tkachuk, Tomas Nosek or Dmitry Kulikov for a few months. And veteran Niko Mikkola went out Saturday after playing just under seven minutes when he went face-first into the ice in a collision with Sabres center Tyson Kozak. That further cut into the Cats' depth on defense.
Florida is 0-4 on a road trip that ends Tuesday in Boston. The champs have been outscored, 15-4, in the four games. It's an early window into why plenty of hockey people think they'll be hard-pressed to even make the playoffs come spring, let alone land the first Stanley Cup three-peat since the 1980s New York Islanders.
"None of our injuries are coming back, so this is our team," Panthers coach Paul Maurice said matter-of-factly after the latest loss. "There's no real point in thinking you'll be better with the guys. This is the hockey team we have and we've got to find a way to get a little tighter in all little areas and maybe a little heavier around the net at the other end. ... Scratch and claw."
The bodies and minds of the Panthers have a lot of mileage on them. You go to three straight Cup finals and you essentially have played four season's worth of games in three years.
But they show up, no matter who is out and who is dressed. Florida had 78 shot attempts in the game and 32 on goal. It was hardly some no-show effort, but the Sabres were better.
"They're very predictable, they always seem to be on the same page, and they play a hard game," Sabres winger Jack Quinn told me as we talked after practice Friday. "They win a lot of battles. And they can kind of like swarm you a little. You're really got to be in the fight against them."
The Sabres certainly were in this one. Bottle the method and refer back to it. It's a winning formula.