The Sabres certainly seem to have a way of bringing a struggling team to life. It would be nice if the team in question would be Buffalo, but that would not be the case on this night.

The Detroit Red Wings came into the game with the league’s best record despite having lost ten of their last eleven contests, and for the Sabres this couldn’t have been a more perfect time to play a team of this caliber.

Unfortunately for Buffalo the Wings chose tonight to be the time to return to form as they dominated the Sabres throughout the first fourty minutes of play on the way to a 4-2 triumph.

“(We were) outraced, outmuscled, and it cost us again.” Said Lindy afterwards.

The Sabres did get the first goal of the game roughly three minutes into the first as Patrick Kaleta got his second career goal as the trailer on an odd man rush. From there the Detroit onslaught began in earnest as they fired eighteen first period shots at Ryan Miller. It would be a borderline miracle that the game would merely be tied at one at the end of the first, as many of the Wings scoring opportunities in that period came in the midst of a two man advantage.

Detroit broke open the game in the second with a pair of goals, the second of the two coming off the stick of Johan Franzen fed oh so nicely from Niklas Kronwall. At that point the momentum of the game made a two goal Wings’ lead seem like five the way the rythym of the game was going.

Hockey is a strange game sometimes, and despite being totally outplayed for virtually the entire game, the Sabres were able to make it a one goal game when Jason Pominville caught everyone off gaurd by racing toward the net with the puck while most others on the ice were involved in a burgeoning scrum near the penalty boxes. Pominville’s shot found the back of the net and how about that, 3-2.

The Wings would kill off any chance of a Sabre rally with their fourth goal with about four minutes left to seal the deal.

Other notes:

Jason Pominville is the latest Sabre to wear the “C” in the monthly rotation…..

A gi-normous game with Philadelphia is up next for Buffalo, safe to say that a loss there puts Buffalo’s postseason hopes in very dire straits….

Patrick Kaleta scored on former Sabre great Dominik Hasek, but the local boy made good didn’t seem too upbeat about it:”Right now I’m not worried about that, I’m more worried about the win.”

To add insult to injury, some loser Detroit fan rubbed salt in the wound by tossing an octopus on the ice during a break in the game’s final minutes.

RSS 2.0 Respond Trackback