Sabres’ Josh Doan continues his breakout season in win over Ducks: 5 thoughts
Doan showed up all over the ice again for Buffalo, which won its 13th out of 14 Saturday night.
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The Sabres continued to roll with Saturday night's win over the Ducks. Timothy T. Ludwig / Imagn Images
In the second period of the Buffalo Sabres’ 5-3 win against the Anaheim Ducks Saturday, Josh Doan showed what makes him such a valuable player.
The Ducks, trailing 1-0, looked like they were about to break the puck out of their defensive zone. Doan closed on Tim Washe, who was carrying the puck, lifted his stick and knocked the puck loose. Peyton Krebs snagged it and fed a perfect pass through the legs of Ducks defenseman Radko Gudas to give Tage Thompson an easy tap-in goal.
So much had to go right for a goal like that to happen, but it wouldn’t have been possible without Doan’s awareness, hustle and strength to get the takeaway. Doan came into the game leading the NHL in takeaways. Some go unnoticed, but that one had a clear impact.
“Pure effort,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “Just on the puck, relentless to take it away. Just an awesome job to get it and got rewarded by the other two guys putting it in the back of the net. But the play doesn’t happen if he doesn’t come up with the effort he came up with. That’s just determination. That’s not quitting on a play. That’s tracking back, getting under his stick. It was just a great play. There’s nothing too much more you can say about it. Just effort alone is A-plus.”
That type of play has become commonplace for Doan. He has 30 points through 43 games, but he brings so much more to Buffalo’s lineup than just scoring. Among forwards with at least 500 five-on-five minutes, Doan’s 58-percent on-ice expected goal share is eighth in the NHL, according to Natural Stat Trick.
“I felt like you could really see it coming,” said Sabres defenseman Michael Kesselring, who played with Doan in Utah. “He just didn’t get the right opportunity. I don’t want to blame anybody. But here, he stepped in and got that opportunity and I feel like he’s gotten better and better and better. He’s hard not to like. He plays hard. He plays the same way every night. He’s annoying to play against. He’s all over you. He lifts your stick. He steals the puck. I know he’s been first in takeaways for a while. That’s an underrated stat.”
Later on, Doan showed another side to his game. After Ryan Strome slashed him behind the play, Doan immediately grabbed him and was ready to fight, which he won handily, firing up the sold-out home crowd.
Things would get a little dicey for the Sabres. Their 4-1 lead shrank to 4-3 in the final minutes, a stressful late-game situation brought on by careless mistakes.
“That’s on us,” Ruff said. “We weren’t good enough. We let our goalie down. That is not up to par for our club. Our club can’t accept that. We’re a better club than that. We played well to that point. What we did in that last five minutes isn’t good enough.”
The Sabres hung on thanks to an empty net goal from Josh Norris, giving them 13 wins in their last 14 games and putting them in the first wild-card position in the Eastern Conference. Their .605 points percentage is tied for ninth best in the league. This week’s schedule includes home games against the Florida Panthers, Philadelphia Flyers and Montreal Canadiens, three other teams battling for playoff position.
“This is what we’ve been waiting for,” Doan said. “We’ve been following the standings and it seems whenever East Coast teams play each other, it ends up in overtime or a shootout. It’s hard to gain points and gain a little bit of separation from teams, but it’s an opportunity for us and a big one where we need to take advantage of being at home for them and take advantage of the situation we’ve got.”
1. Jack Quinn had two goals after scoring just one in his previous 19 games. Ruff has been adamant that Quinn has been generating enough chances to warrant the patience the coaching staff has shown in him.
“It goes a long way, his confidence in me,” Quinn said. “You don’t feel the pressure as much. He believes in me, so it’s nice to be able to just go out there and play my game.”
Quinn’s first goal came early when Ryan McLeod set him up on a two-on-one. Later, Quinn put the Sabres up 4-1 with what would end up being the game-winner when he stopped and cut toward the middle of the ice as the back-checkers passed him by and then launched a shot into the top corner.
“He can make a big difference, for sure,” Ruff said. “You look at quality opportunities and putting teams away, he’s had a lot of those opportunities to help get us that extra goal. He’s been in good position. But it’s like I said, they’ll go in. Sometimes goal scorers go through a little stretch like that, but it was good. He’s working hard, he’s skating well, he’s in on a good number of chances, so that’s big for us.
2. Bowen Byram tied his career high with his 10th goal of the season. He led the team in ice time at 25:56, and the Sabres had an 8-3 advantage in scoring chances during his five-on-five minutes. He was on the ice for four of Buffalo’s five goals and has been a major catalyst for the offense lately. He’s become a workhorse, and Ruff trusts him in every situation. Byram replaced Owen Power on Buffalo’s second power-play unit while leading the team in shorthanded ice time.
3. This was a rare off night for the pair of Mattias Samuelsson and Rasmus Dahlin. During their five-on-five minutes, the Ducks had a 16-7 advantage in scoring chances. With how much the Sabres have been leaning on the top four defensemen, it’s worth watching for some signs of fatigue with a heavy schedule coming up.
4. It was the 12th time in 43 games this season in which the Sabres have blocked 20 or more shots in a game. All of last season, the Sabres had 20 or more blocked shots in a game just 10 times. The team’s collective buy-in has been evident on a nightly basis.
“That’s the sacrifice this group is willing to make for each other,” Doan said. “A lot of it is because of how close of a group we are and how much fun we have together.”
5. Kesselring, who aggravated a high-ankle sprain against the Stars on New Year’s Eve, is getting closer to a return. He skated with the team during the morning skate Saturday and said he should be able to play again at some point later in the week. Given the workload of the team’s top four defensemen, Kesselring’s return will be a welcome sight.