Your Three Stars from last week: Sam Reinhart, Marcus Foligno and Rasmus Ristolainen. The Three Goats are Dmitry Kulikov, Nicolas Deslauriers and Anders Nilsson.
Here is the LINK to the spreadsheet with all this season’s results.
After an encouraging win in Detroit, it looked like the Buffalo Sabres were building up a head of steam for the home-and-home against the Boston Bruins, and two wins against the hated division rivals would actually put the Sabres in the midst of the playoffs. They played an inspired first period at the KeyBank Center Thursday, and then it was all downhill from there.
Oh well. No surprise that the Sabres closed out 2016 in the same way they had played many times during the calendar year – flattering to deceive, looking inspired in bursts but overall still an underwhelming team playing some terrible hockey more often than not.
The poor hockey seems to be taking a toll on the fanbase as well – last week’s poll only had thirty votes in.
As always, we’ve got all the forwards and defensemen who played over the past week in the grading.
We’re sticking with the Corsi For % as well the stats beyond just the goals, assists and +/-. For Dan Bylsma we’ve added the team’s overall Corsi For % as a measurable stat.
Rate the player PP, PK and coach’s performances for these games –
Detroit Red Wings 3-4 Buffalo Sabres
Buffalo Sabres 2-4 Boston Bruins
Boston Bruins 3-1 Buffalo Sabres