Sabres beat #1 Flyers, playoff race in East tightens
Big win for the Buffalo Sabres toady against the Philadelphia Flyers. They won 5-3 in the Wells Fargo Center on the second stop on their season-long seven game road trip.
Philadelphia, who sits atop the East Conference with 86 points, looked to have the Sabres outmatched in a dominant first period, but Buffalo never gave up and came back to take the lead in the second and close it out in the third.
Only one point seperates Buffalo from eigth place Carolina and two points from the seventh place New York Rangers. But here is the most important statistic at this point in the race: games in hand. Buffalo has 2 and 3 games in hand with those teams respectively. This means Buffalo has that many more games remaining than those teams.
If Buffalo wins those games in hand, that puts them in seventh place. Of course, they're going to have to win on the road to stay in the race, but I think they're in good shape at this pont. Also, don't count out Toronto, they're only four points out and hold games in hand as well.
Here's my thoughts on today's game:
Andrej Sekera is on fire right now. In the four games since Lindy Ruff briefly benched him, he has recorded 2 goals, 6 assists and a plus 5 rating. He looked like a forward today when he picked up his own rebound, skated around the net and scored top-shelf.
With Brad Boyes, it has been so far so good. Today was his third game with Buffalo and after getting a goal in each of his first two, he picked up two assists this time.
The Sabres need their top forwards to be generating the team's offense, and today they did that. Stafford, Ennis and Pominville all scored and Vanek did some nice passing to set up two of those goals.
The Sabres' power play is one of the best in the NHL, but they also give up the most short handed goals. They gave up another one today, which could have been very costly because it tied the game. I don't know why this has been happening, but they better not let it happen again because they are just shooting themselves in the foot.
