Don't Get Me Wrong

I realize that my last couple of posts here make it seem like I'm all doom and gloom about this team right now, but don't be fooled. After seeing two strong games and hearing about another, the Doldrums are festering far behind me now. It seems like the same can be said of the Sabres (with the possible exception of Pominville--it remains to be seen whether he has pulled himself together to my liking), who came off last weekend's decided lack of luster with square shoulders and straight screwed-on heads all around.

The Edmonton and Calgary games were hardly the prettiest games I've ever seen, but they were wins. They were types of wins, in fact, that it seems like this team hasn't been able to pull off in some seasons. If the biggest insult to the 2007-2009 Sabres was that they were gutless, then these two games (Calgary in particular) were undeniable displays of guts. Going up against the notoriously tougher Western Conference, the Sabres didn't let themselves get pushed around or intimidated off the puck. When they were shoved, they shoved back, to the point that their game against the Flames began to resemble a barrage of scrums and almost-but-not-quite highlight-reel goals in constant alternation. And instead of wearing thin from the effort of trying to keep up and allowing the Flames to pull away late in the game, they matched them through 65 minutes and met them in the shootout. Shootout wins are never my favorite, but this one did have a little dramatic flair about it since the game had been so hard fought by both sides. (I suppose that should make the fact that one of them lost remarkably unfair, but I don't really feel like getting into that right now. My vitriol levels are too low for me to accurately talk about my feelings for the shootout.) All in all, even though the Sabres put me to sleep (literally) with their early second period snoozeout, it was a game that they fought hard to win and that they deserved to win. Any time I see that from this team it's exciting. Maybe someday it will stop feeling new, too.

If the Calgary game was about grit, then the Edmonton game was about control. Sure, it got a little wonky in the middle, and the MacArthur on Reddox hit was obviously anything but controlled, but the Sabres started out with a firm grip on the play, and ended on a dominant note with a 5-minute penalty kill and successfully holding off the Oiler tie-up attempt. If you can't show up for a full 60 minutes, then those are the minutes you want to make sure you cover, and that's just what the Sabres did. It wasn't a perfect game, but it got the job done with as little drama as possible. That 5-minute PK was a reassuring sign from the Sabres that even when things get a little hairy, they know what they need to do. How many times did we see hairiness scare them in the opposite direction last season?

As I said, I didn't get to see the game in Philly, but I have a hard time imagining that toughness wasn't involved, given that the Flyers added names like Pronger and Emery to their infamy this off-season. Eye-witness reports have told me no differently, and that's a doubly encouraging sign considering that, with the game they played the night before, fatigue must have been a factor.

There are still many questions waiting to be answered about this iteration of the Sabres: Will Vanek get visible again? Will anyone show up when Miller can't? Will Timmy stay healthy? (Who am I kidding, we all know the answer to that already.) But for right now it seems like this team has finally figured out that there's more to the game than scoring goals when you can and hoping for the best when you can't. That, more than anything, gives me hope that they have discarded their old binary of either playing offensively (as in lighting the lamp), or playing offensively (as in I am offended).

And with the Panthers in town tonight, the Sabres find themselves with another prime opportunity to prove they've broken an old habit. Let's see if they've learned how not to play down to their competition.

Let's Go, Buffalo!