Mike Harrington: Sabres say the scoreboard is the response. Not this time.
The Sabres are still last in the East. They left the ice still 11 points out of a playoff spot. So what exactly did they win here?
The first-period Sabres are an easy playoff team and look like a deep-in-the-spring contender.
The rest of the time? They may as well let the fire alarms ring in KeyBank Center. It’s one emergency after another that leaves you shaking your head.
Before delving into the details, let’s restate the bottom line from Sunday’s on-the-edge matinee: The Sabres built a 3-0 lead through one spectacular period, then held on by their chinny-chin-chin to beat the New Jersey Devils, 4-3.
They’ve won three in a row now and get their fifth chance of the season for a four-game winning streak Tuesday night when Columbus comes to town.
Sabres right wing JJ Peterka, left, and center Tage Thompson celebrate Peterka’s goal in the first period of Sunday’s game against the New Jersey Devils at KeyBank Center. Joed Viera, Buffalo News
Now the nitty-gritty: This team watched Tage Thompson – by far their best forward – take a cheap, dirty hit to the head from Devils forward Stefan Noesen in the third period and did nothing about it. Coach Lindy Ruff got pretty defensive when the media started in on the topic afterward and said a couple of players wanted to go after Noesen.
No one did and the optics on this just aren’t good.
Noesen got a match penalty and is probably going to get suspended, but he was gone for the day. And he’s gone for the season now as far as the Sabres are concerned, because these teams don’t play each other again until 2025-26.
Now before we go all Lucic-Miller circa 2011 on this play, remember it happened fast and in the middle of the ice. I saw the hit and saw Thompson go down and didn’t know which Devils player got him either. I’m far above the ice with a huge panoramic angle, so guys down below may not have seen it either. I would, however, have liked somebody on the bench to have called it out — as in, “It was No. 11, It was No. 11.”
Jason Zucker is absolved because he had followed Dougie Hamilton and the puck, and didn’t see the hit. He correctly pointed out it happened in a heartbeat, and you could see him in the moment circling around trying to figure out who the culprit was.
You’re not expecting Jiri Kulich to do anything about it. Unfortunately, Owen Power isn’t built that way. And that leaves Mattias Samuelsson, who took the fall on the situation as he should have.
“That’s definitely on us. I was on the ice and I take some responsibility for that,” Samuelsson said. “I didn’t really know what happened or who did it. It’s BS, too, when the guy gets kicked out, so you can’t respond afterwards. ... I think there was a lot of confusion and stuff going on.”
Noesen was running around quite a bit in this one and although you would imagine he would plead ignorance on the Thompson play as merely an attempt to go for the puck against a player who was crouched over, he went directly though Thompson’s head. And hard.
I put the binoculars on Thompson as he stood up and I didn’t like the look at all. He had the glazed eyes heading down the path of Bills defensive back Christian Benford last week in Kansas City. The postgame word was that Thompson was OK, which sure surprised me.
The Sabres had a five-minute power play and a quick goal that would have put them up, 5-2, might have given them a chance for an eye-for-an-eye response on someone in a white jersey. But they gave up a shortie to Jack Hughes that cut the deficit to one and had to play it straight.
Or did they? Call me a dinosaur from the 1970s or 80s if you want, but with Noesen gone, somebody still could have taken liberties with Hughes or Jasper Bratt or Timo Meier and nobody did.
Bad look, boys.
“I agree with you,” captain Rasmus Dahlin said when this point was made to him. “We need more of a pushback for sure but all we wanted to do was get those two points and tomorrow we can focus on the other things.”
The Sabres and Devils aren’t in the same division and only play three times a season but they sure seem to have a lot going on when they play. A lot of the angst goes back to early last season, when Connor Clifton earned a two-game suspension for a high hit on Devils captain Nico Hischier.
JJ Peterka was concussed in Prague by a hit from Devils defenseman Brendan Dillon. Now we have Noeson on Thompson and there were several other little plays in this game that were bothersome.
Noesen had drilled Zucker from behind with a cross check right after Zucker’s goal gave the Sabres a 4-1 lead late in the second period and Zucker bolted up, laughing and yapping in the Devils’ faces, Matthew Barnaby style. Good.
“Our response is we won,” Zucker said. “He can hit me from behind and we scored a goal. He made two plays that cost their team a win and we’ll take that all day.”
There was a lot to like in this game. When it ended, the Sabres had killed a couple of late penalties, stayed poised when times got tough and got the win. When it started, they skated the Devils into the ground behind three points from Thompson and a lovely short-handed goal from Ryan McLeod.
The Sabres have beaten the top three teams in the Metropolitan Division – Washington, Carolina and New Jersey – at home over the last four weeks. They’re 10-7-1 since that absurd 13-game winless streak ended, including 5-2 at home.
But they’re still last in the East. They left the ice still 11 points out of a playoff spot.
So what exactly did they win here?