GDT: Sabres @ Sens - Friday, Mar 6th, 7:30pm, TSN5, RDS

LeCaptain wrote:

wprager wrote:That was UG-LY!  

I'll take a couple more like that.

Clearly that first game after a long roadie curse is alive and well.  If we were playing any other team it would have been a different story.  Thank goodness it was Buffalo.

Disagree with you on this one. We dominated them like there was no tomorrow.

Dominated? Edmonton put up 46 shots on Crawford last night. The could be considered dominating. We spent 19 minutes in their end and got 12 shots first two periods. 36 shots on goal over three periods is nice but hardly "domination", especially when you consider that it's the worst team in the league. Plus we got zero shots on goal on two powerplays.

I don't know what game you were watching, but the Buffalo Sabres are horrible, laughable, almost, yet they had a 2-0 lead and almost 3-0 a couple times. We dominated the territorial play, for sure, but instead of being hard on the puck, shooting from everywhere, banging and crashing, they were playing a very cute game. Looked like a coach playing a game of keepaway against his peewee team at the end of practice.

I get it that they were back home after a long trip and this pretty much was to be expected. As I said, thank heavens the first game was against the Sabres. I fully believe they'll play better tomorrow (if they play like last night, bye-bye faint playoff hopes). I'll very happily take the two points but you won't convince me that that was a dominating performance.

rooneypoo wrote:

SpezDispensed wrote:Man...I have a mancrush on stone, Ryan and zbad right now.  Stone is such a fantastic player.  

There's not one guy in the forward ranks not playing their role.

Starting to dig Wiercioch now too.  

Fun team to watch, I look forward to seeing the young players develop further.

We have 6 players on pace to score 20+ goals this year, with MacArthur and Michalek likely to fall short in the 15~ goal range. Stone, Zibanejad, and Hoffman have all taken that next step. Gotta love that balance.

Yeah, for sure. It's a balance that was sorely lacking in the first 30 games or so with Zibanejad doing previous little, but everything's coming together at this point.

Now...we need some consistency throughout a full year. That's the next big step IMO. No one is expecting these guys to get points every game, but the massive, prolonged streaks that Michalek, Turris, zbad and Mac had will hopefully we aided next year by the newfound and developed.

Still have to continue banging the drum for Pageau, lazar and Condra. Playing fantastic hockey.

wprager wrote:

LeCaptain wrote:

wprager wrote:That was UG-LY!  

I'll take a couple more like that.

Clearly that first game after a long roadie curse is alive and well.  If we were playing any other team it would have been a different story.  Thank goodness it was Buffalo.

Disagree with you on this one. We dominated them like there was no tomorrow.

Dominated?  Edmonton put up 46 shots on Crawford last night.  The could be considered dominating.  We spent 19 minutes in their end and got 12 shots first two periods.  36 shots on goal over three periods is nice but hardly "domination", especially when you consider that it's the worst team in the league.  Plus we got zero shots on goal on two powerplays.

I don't know what game you were watching, but the Buffalo Sabres are horrible, laughable, almost, yet they had a 2-0 lead and almost 3-0 a couple times.  We dominated the territorial play, for sure, but instead of being hard on the puck, shooting from everywhere, banging and crashing, they were playing a very cute game.  Looked like a coach playing a game of keepaway against his peewee team at the end of practice.

I get it that they were back home after a long trip and this pretty much was to be expected.  As I said, thank heavens the first game was against the Sabres.  I fully believe they'll play better tomorrow (if they play like last night, bye-bye faint playoff hopes).  I'll very happily take the two points but you won't convince me that that was a dominating performance.

i dunno. I saw the Sens stay in buffalos zone for huge stretches of the play. I couldn't believe it was still 2-1 after 40.

And it felt like they took 100 shots and had 60 blocked or missed.

Buffalo was dominated for long, long stretches. Heck, there were 4 or 5 minute stretches were the only time I recall them touching he pick was to desperately clear their zone.

Could easily have been 10-2 IMO. They're a disgracefully bad team.

Flo The Action wrote:

NEELY wrote:Funny you say that, I asked my wife if there was a concert here the night before (she would know more than I would) because the puck wouldn't settle down and guys kept falling.  The ice quality looked damn awful.

Aside from all that they did what they needed to do and now they are 3 points back with their playoffs hopes 100% in their own hands.  That's a position 99.9% of Sens fans didn't believe was possible.

We're the 99%! We're the 99%!!!

I consider myself fairly practical when it comes to these matters, but with a tint of optimism. Even before they got to 14 points behind I thought they were done. The whole season they could barely string together 2 good games so there was nothing, really, to point to as hope for a turn around. Some of the changes were gradual (injuries to Neil, Phillips, Smith, suspension to Cowen), then there was the Methot comeback that didn't really pay off as much as I'd hoped it would (yes, Karlsson started playing much better but they were still not winning consistently). When Anderson went down I thought maybe the team would rally around Lehner, but they continued with the inconsistent play. Who could have predicted that a collision between a struggling backup and a struggling former top-six (CMac was on the third or 4th line by then, wasn't he?) would finally provide them with something/someone to rally around?

SpezDispensed wrote:
i dunno.   I saw the Sens stay in buffalos zone for huge stretches of the play.  I couldn't believe it was still 2-1 after 40.  

And it felt like they took 100 shots and had 60 blocked or missed.  

Buffalo was dominated for long, long stretches.  Heck, there were 4 or 5 minute stretches were the only time I recall them touching he pick was to desperately clear their zone.  

Could easily have been 10-2 IMO.  They're a disgracefully bad team.  

Yes, it was 2-1 and could have easily been 3-0 or worse. Karlsson's shot was going way wide and there was a post on a shot that beat Hammond plus a breakdown in communication between Hammond and one of the D where I couldn't believe Buffalo didn't score.

Point is they almost looked like they were playing with Buffalo but they were not putting the boot to their necks and going that extra step to actually score. Buffalo is so bad that it should have been 6-0 or worse.

But I'm very happy with the 2 points because this was the dreaded 1st home game after a long road trip.

Flo The Action wrote:

NEELY wrote:Funny you say that, I asked my wife if there was a concert here the night before (she would know more than I would) because the puck wouldn't settle down and guys kept falling.  The ice quality looked damn awful.

Aside from all that they did what they needed to do and now they are 3 points back with their playoffs hopes 100% in their own hands.  That's a position 99.9% of Sens fans didn't believe was possible.

We're the 99%! We're the 99%!!!

We sure are friend.