Category: Hockey History 1917-2023

Road Victory Improves Wild Card Standing

Sabres 5 – Predators 3 (en) Buffalo Sabres rookie (C) Konsta Helenius scored his first goal and earned two assists for his first multi-point game in his second NHL game, additionally, the 19 years old Finnish standout played 17 shifts, blocked a shot, dished out two hits, and took four shots on net.

When Buffalo’s (C) Thompson scored his 26th of the year to increase the Sabres lead to 4-0 four and a half minutes into the second period you could almost hear a funeral dirge for Nashville.

But Nashville’s and former Buffalo (C) O’Reilly channeling his younger self beginning halfway through the second period scored when Nashville had six skaters in Buffalo’s end then assisted on another before scoring again halfway through the third period to get the Predators within one goal of tying the game at 4-3 with 10:30 remaining.

Buffalo (G) Lyon allowed only three goals on 34 Nashville shots earning himself a .912% save percentage while stopping 13 of 14 Predators SOG during the third period to assist in preserving the victory.

The Buffalo Sabres visit the Montreal Canadiens this Thursday evening for game three of the Sabres current five-game road trip at 7 pm EST.

San Jose and Florida goaltenders duke it out

Here along the Lake Last week I wrote about goaltenders fighting decades ago, well history repeats itself as the Panthers continue on a downward spiral away from the playoffs.

Arguably the Panther’s goaltender was doing what he thought was just after watching the Shark’s goaltender leave his crease and attack one of the Panthers skaters who had taken a cheap shot on a Sharks player low into his back giving the San Jose’s netminder justification to jump in the ensuing scrum to go after the offending Panthers player.

Four officials on the ice and one of them could have prevented this as the Florida goaltender had to skate 200 feet to join in the fracas, they seen him coming and allowed it to happen, hopefully neither goaltender was seriously injured.

Buffalo Beaten by officials once more

Sabres 1 – Hurricanes 2 In a nationally televised game the announcers at TNT declared that both teams were playing like this was a playoff game, and it felt like it, but once again officiating has to be involved.

Even though the goonish tactics against our Captain was ridiculous Buffalo’s Captain (D) Dahlin still scored the game’s first goal, the Hurricanes (RW) Svechnikov was whistled for roughing the Sabres Captain no less than three times with our Captain responding only once.

The referees called the first two periods evenly but two minutes into the third period of a 1-1 playoff type game the officials hand the home team a man advantage that the Hurricanes were successful with and then the only other whistle came with three minutes remaining in the game with offsetting penalties, effectively halting Buffalo’s opportunity to pull the goalie until there was little time left to work with.

The Buffalo Sabres continue tonight versus the Predators in Nashville at 8 pm EST as the Sabres play the second game of a back-to-back in what is the second game of a five-game road trip.

81 Transactions / No goaltenders / Third Overall

Here along the Lake We have another team manager eliminated from playoff contention and the top five teams are in a quagmire of parity competing for the four playoff seedings.

Transactions In the past five days three team managers have been busy; there are defensemen that I rotate in and out of my weekly lineup, usually the ones rated at 1.7 points per game on average which is just low enough that most team managers do not notice them, but these defensemen are the ones who get me the most blocks, and the half points earned from them add up quickly.

This is why I am consistently moving (D) Chiarot, (D) Cole, (D) Pesce & (D) Lindell in and out of my lineup depending on which NHL team is playing and how many of my weekly allotment of transactions I have used, I am not losing anything even if another team manager selects one of these players for their roster because there are plenty of 1.7 rated players to go around.

My previous two transactions were to drop (D) Chiarot (rated 1.7) and added (D) Montour (rated 1.9) which strengthens my roster considerably, fortunately I am reviewing my watch list and the “add players” listing each day to notice which players are trending up to add to my watch list.

These are players I am currently monitoring, (D) Cole is rated a low 1.5 but has 98 blocks which can be useful and his NHL team Utah is the number one wild card seeded team in the Western Conference, so this player’s rating is a bit misleading so that most team managers will dismiss this player’s ability to contribute.

Six weekly matchups remaining before the playoff seedings are frozen and this final stretch of weeks is going to be interesting indeed.

Overly Officious

Sabres 4 Wild 5 (OT) The Buffalo Sabres were tied by the Minnesota Wild in a closely played game which saw both teams take the lead and score all their regulation goals and earned penalties including a fight in the first two periods.

During the second period the Wild were able to take a 3-1 lead just one minute into the period, then Buffalo scored three straight goals to not only tie the game but take the 4-3 before Minnesota was able to tie the score 4-4 before the end of the period.

The Sabres 9 SOG and the Wild 10 SOG could not score in the third period and neither team were whistled for a penalty until the Referee called a weak hooking infraction on Buffalo with only 11 seconds remaining in a tight 4-4 game handing Minnesota a power play to begin overtime with.

The Minnesota Wild earned a tie with the 5-4 overtime victory in the two-game regular season series with the Buffalo Sabres as each team won on the road, and now the Sabres embark on a five-game road trip beginning on Martin Luther King Jr. Day this Monday afternoon at 1:30 pm EST versus the Carolina Hurricanes.