Strong defensive effort seals 4-2 win against bitter division rival<\/p>\n
Boxscore<\/p>\n
Score:\u00a0Buffalo Sabres 4-2 Tampa Bay Lightning
Shots:\u00a0BUF 29-25 TBL<\/p>\n
Buffalo Sabres Goals: Tuch 30 (Byram, McLeod); Norris 11 (Doan, Benson); Zucker 23 (Byram, Dahlin); Quinn 19 ENG
Tampa Bay Lightning Goals:\u00a0Kucherov 43 PPG (Guentzel, Raddysh); Guentzel 37 (Point, Raddysh)zz<\/p>\n
Quick Thoughts<\/p>\n
Reports of their Demise<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start off by clearly stating that rumours of the Buffalo Sabres\u2019 death have been greatly exaggerated. Yes the Sabres have been flat in the last few games but within the first few minutes after puck drop tonight showed that not only were they ready to take on this kind of opponent, they were more than prepared to play playoff hockey. <\/p>\n
True Grit<\/p>\n
Speaking of playoff hockey, how about that overall performance by the Sabres tonight? They were physical, strong on and off the puck, getting the timely saves and scoring the even timelier goals to keep the visitors on the back-foot. The Sabres went 3-0-1 against the Bolts and showed that they are ready to play them in a seven-game series. <\/p>\n
They took the lead thrice, and though they let the Bolts come back twice, they kept them off the scoreboard that vital \u2013 and final \u2013 third time. <\/p>\n
D-Fence<\/p>\n
Buffalo\u2019s secret recipe this season has been playing strong defense, and hitting their opponents with attacking, freewheeling hockey (aka river hockey). They beat Tampa tonight by shutting them down for long periods, frustrating the ultra-talented Floridians. Check out the stats in this next stanza.<\/p>\n
A Winning Formula<\/p>\n
All season long the Sabres have won by winning the first or the second period, and then playing solid defense in the final stanza, and they did it again tonight. Check out the numbers \u2013 scoring chances for & against 17-3, 12-10, 2-10 from first to third period; expected goals for & against 1.37-0.54, 1.32-0.88, 0.52-0.87; Corsi for & against 23-10, 20-17, 10-25.<\/p>\n
UPL tames Big Cat<\/p>\n
Two periods in, Andrei Vasilevskiy was outdueling Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen with a solid showing, foiling Alex Tuch and Zach Benson multiple times among other Sabres. However, UPL was not to be outdone on his home ice given his current form. The Finn was ice-cold in the final period, and despite the Lightning having 83.33% of the scoring chances in the third stanza, he didn\u2019t concede again to lead the Sabres to a 4-2 win. UPL finished with another positive Goals Saved Above Expected with a plus 0.48 margin this time. <\/p>\n
Power Play Still Blanking<\/p>\n
The Sabres power play was atrocious over the weekend and wasn\u2019t much better tonight, going 0\/4. Opponents like the Lightning will continue to take liberties against the Sabres stars unless we start punishing them for the penalties they take, much like when the two sides last met. <\/p>\n
At The Horn<\/p>\n
The Buffalo Sabres have to be feeling pretty good about how they have played against the Tampa Bay Lightning, and it\u2019s a potential trailer for the upcoming postseason. The Bolts started the day two points ahead of the Sabres with a game in hand, but now they just have that one game less played with the two teams level on points. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
From when the Hockey Stat Cards became available earlier this season, this is by far the most \u2018positive\u2019 performance the Sabres have had with only Tage Thompson and Luke Schenn in the minus territory, and that too marginally. <\/p>\n
Buffalo has certainly bounced back from their recent hiccups with tonight\u2019s showing. They\u2019ll be looking to close out the remainder of the season in a positive fashion, starting with Wednesday against the Rangers at MSG. <\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Strong defensive effort seals 4-2 win against bitter division rival Boxscore Score:\u00a0Buffalo Sabres 4-2 Tampa Bay LightningShots:\u00a0BUF 29-25…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5100],"tags":[1107,229,5133,5,4,1108],"class_list":{"0":"post-544981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-buffalo-sabres","8":"tag-buffalo","9":"tag-buffalo-sabres","10":"tag-buffalosabres","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-sabres"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116361784664298797","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}