Tonight’s Buffalo Sabres loss to the New York Islanders was the perfect microcosm of their season at large, and an excellent example of the two most common types of Sabres games during the 2014-15 season.
The game began as so many have, with the Sabres getting completely dominated by the Islanders. They found themselves down 1-0 after the first thanks to Colin McDonald’s first goal of the season, and barely had control of the puck for the first 20 minutes of the game. In fact, at the end of two periods, they had been outshot 24-8 by the Isles, with only three measly shots in the second period.
Of course, two of those three shots happened to find the back of the net, turning this into the other type of typical Sabres game, the one where they get outplayed for 80% of the game, but somehow manage to score enough to stay in it.
It all started after a Ted Nolan timeout, called after the Sabres went down 3-0 and looked like they had just given up. However, on their first shot after the timeout, MArcus Foligno charge to the net and took a Nikita Zadorov shot off of his chest to open the Sabres scoring. Just a few minutes later, Drew Stafford scored an absolute beauty on a rush to pull the Sabres within one.
However, despite their mid-game explosion, the Sabres put just two shots on net -TWO SHOTS ON NET – in the third period despite being down by a goal, and ended up losing 3-2.
They started horribly, had a great five minutes in the middle, and finished even worse than they started. Essentially, the 2014-15 season in a nutshell.
Comment of the Game
Nolan yells and the Sabres score two.
I think it’s because they are tired of hearing him talk