Well, for the Buffalo Sabres, its not over yet. After another dominating win against the Washington Capitals last night, that hope is growing into something real. Two months ago, this team was in the middle of a franchise record road losing streak and was sitting in the basement of the Eastern Conference and now they managed to turn a ten point gap into the eighth and final playoff spot. At least thats where they sit today.

Currently the Sabres are on a 5 game win streak after posting dominating wins against Tampa Bay, Montreal, the New York Rangers, Minnesota and Washington. Through this current streak, the Sabres have outscored their opponents 22-6, thanks in large part to the line of Drew Stafford-Tyler Ennis-Marcus Foligno and the stellar play of Ryan Miller.

» Continue reading “Buffalo Sabres Seize 8th Place From Caps”

It took 9 games, but Cody Hodgson has finally arrived. He scored his first point as a Buffalo Sabre on Monday night against Tampa Bay by picking up the primary assist on Jason Pominville's power play goal late in the first period. He followed that up by adding a secondary assist on Corey Tropp's third goal of the season in the second period. After that game, the CoHo haters quieted down a bit, but after tonight there is really nothing left for them to complain about.

Hodgson scored what would become the game winning goal 6:15 into the first period. The ovation Hodgson received when his name was announced was glorious to say the least. He’s worked hard and is finally starting to feel comfortable with his new teammates, which is becoming more and more obvious as we watch his puck handling. He is starting to figure out where players are going to be and his passing has become much stronger as games have progressed. just to add icing to the cake (and to silence the rest of the haters out there), he scored again .

» Continue reading “Welcome to the CoHo Show”

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it
was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. . . .

A rather fitting quote of this game. It was the best of times, see Tyler Ennis’ game. It was the worst of times, see Montreal’s game tying goal with 3 seconds left in the game. It was he age of wisdom, see Derek Roy’s pass to Tyler Myers to win the game in overtime. It was the age of foolishness, see Ville Leino’s giveaway in the first that led to the first Habs goal.

The entire game, the last ten minutes or so being the exception, was completely dominated by the Sabres. It became very evident almost immediately that the Canadiens were a little tired, as Buffalo skated all over them. Somehow, the Habs came out of the first period with a 1-0 lead, despite the tilted shot totals (14 – 6 in favor of Buffalo). Erik Cole opened the scoring after an untimely giveaway by Ville Leino off the wall. Desharnais picked up the loose puck and dumped it back to Cole who slapped it over Miller’s shoulder.

» Continue reading “A Tale Of Two Tyler’s”

Jason Pominville, the lone Sabres player (rookie not included, sorry Luker) to be participating in the All Star festivities, was selected in the 18th round of the player draft this evening in Ottawa. Pominville will represent Team Alfredson; ironic, I think yes. Either way, congrats to the captain!

Well its official Sabres fans, we finally have a full time captain, Mr. Jason Pominville!!  The team announced today at their team dinner in Helsinki, Finland that Pominville will serve as the captian for the 2011-2012 season.  Paul Gaustad, Drew Stafford, Derek Roy and Thomas Vanek will serve as the assistants.

This may come as a surprise to some, considering many thought Vanek would be our next captain, but I personally felt Pominville should have been the captain forever and a year ago (then we could have avoided the Rivet debacle).  When Pommer wore the ‘C’ for the last few months of the 2007-2008 season, the team was successful in terms of that season posting an 8-6-3 record and scoring 57 goals in 17 games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEpr8moQBPs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnwUYahu3Bc

What are your thoughts on this decision?  Give me the good, the bad, the AWESOME!  Clearly you can all see where my stance is, now tell me yours!

Well the awesomeness in Pegulaville just keeps on coming.  They Sabres made a splash on the first day of free agency by signing forward Ville Leino to a 6 year contract worth $27 million.  Another awesome deal, at least in my mind. Leino is still young and should have no problem adjusting to Lindy’s system and he would look mighty nice centering a line with Jason Pominville and Tyler Ennis/Drew Stafford/Thomas Vanek.  He’s big and is not afraid to play in front of the net, which is something this team has lacked outside of the services of Paul Gaustad and Vanek.  I’m looking forward to seeing how Lindy works him into the fold and cna’t wait to see that beautiful shot next season.

To keep up with some of the grit, the Sabres also re-signed forward Cody McCormick to a multi-year deal.  I love McCormick, seriously though he’s one of my favorites, and couldn’t be more excited to have him back.  The combo of McCormick, Gaustad and Kaleta makes for quite the thundering third line, with McCormick leading the way with 16 fighting majors last season.

On a side note, Tim Connolly is GONE!!!!! I don’t even care that he signed with the Maple Leafs, thats how excited the city of Buffalo is to be done with his injury riddled self.  The contract is of course absurd, I mean really, would you pay a middle of the road (at best) center, who is hurt more than he is healthy $4.75 million A YEAR… Thats $750,000 more than he was making in Buffalo.  Either way, enjoy him Toronto, that is if you ever get to see him play.

Stay tuned, because there is no way this team is finished yet. There are still 4 RFA’s (Enroth, Gragnani, Weber and Sejkera) to sign and the team has about $1.3 million left until they hit the cap ceiling.  Something’s gotta give, now its just a waiting game to see what that something is.

Looks like Terry Pegula is interested in bringing the kids closer to home.  Pegula has reportedly signed a letter of intent to purchase the Rochester Americans of the AHL (woot!).  The Amerks were the primary farm club for the Sabres until the 2007-2008 season, when the teams parted ways.  Since then the Sabres primary affiliate has been the Portland Pirates, which is not close to Buffalo (sadface).  For years, we jumped in the car and went to Amerks games, hell we watched Ryan Miller, Jason Pominville, Derek Roy and so many others come up through the ranks, now its just impossible unless you are willing to shell out a small fortune for gas or a plane ticket.
Hopefully this deal works out, because then there will be lots of one hour drives and Dinosaur BBQ in many Sabres fans futures!!!!

Stay tuned for an update!

At their season ending press conference, the team was asked to comment on the players that were injured in games leading up to and during the playoffs.  The injuries were:

Jason Pominville suffered a severed tendon in Game 2 and will require 4-6 months to heal.  Pominville has had a rough season on the injury front, having played in 335 straight games before being injured in October on a hit from Niklas Hjalmarsson, who was suspended for 2 games after the hit was evaluated by the league.  The hope is that he will recover quickly and be ready for training camp.

Tim Connolly suffered a sternum separation after being hit by Mike Richards in Game 6 and would have missed between 4-6 weeks had the Sabres continued in the playoffs.  This, to me, was rather surprising as I was expecting the team to announce Connolly suffered a concussion.  Timmy has quite the history of injury dating back to the 2003-2004 season (which he missed due to post concussion syndrome).  In the last 5 seasons, Connolly has played in 281 games out of the 492 he was eligible to play in.

Patrick Kaleta suffered a broken hand blocking a shot and will have surgery on Monday.

Mike Grier will have surgery on his wrist sometime in the near future.  He was also dealing with a bad knee for most of the season.  His future is up in the air and when asked by the media “here or retire,” his response was “…if I play again, it’ll be here, if not that will probably be it.”  Mike Grier was brought back to this team to help the young guys and be a leader in the locker room he did that and more throughout the course of the season, however, I just don’t think his body will be able to hold up for another season.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Sabres tried to put him in a role similar to that of Kevyn Adams (player development coach).

Andrej Sekera was suffering from an oblique strain in the rib area.  He tried to return and play through it in Game 7, but it was not healed enough.  He turned down a chance to play in the World Championships for Slovakia to allow himself a chance to heal.

Jochen Hecht suffered a concussion on March 29th against the Toronto Maple Leafs and missed the final 6 games of the regular season as well as the first 6 games of the 1st round playoff series against the Flyers.

Ryan Miller was also suffering from a concussion after being hit in the head with four shots over the course of a few games.  As many people suspected, the injury was believed to be just a bruised collarbone (which he also had) after taking a hard shot from Dion Phaneuf on March 29th.

On a happier note though, Paul Gaustad was invited to join Team USA for the IIHF Men’s World Championships in Slovakia.  Gaustad will be making his Team USA debut.  Marc-Andre Gragnani was also added to the Team Canada roster for the tournament after a spectacular 1st round playoff series.

 

 

According to Coach Lindy Ruff, Derek Roy will be ready to replace Tim Connolly in the line-up for Game 7 in Philadelphia on Tuesday.  Tim Connolly was injured late in the second period of Game 6 Sunday in Buffalo.  Connolly was battling for the puck in the corner, when Mike Richards checked him from behind and drove his head into the boards.  Connolly laid on the ice for several minutes while being attended to by a Sabres doctor and left the ice looking like he had been run over by a bus (aka RJ Umberger in 2006).  Richards received a 2 minute boarding penalty on the play.  Following the game, Ruff urged the league to look into the hit saying “Tim’s not doing too good…. It’s a lack of respect for another player on the ice.  Its from behind, its headfirst into the boards, that’s a tough play, we lost a good player.”

Derek Roy will be making his playoff debut if he plays on Tuesday.  Roy has not played since December when he was injured in a game against the Florida Panthers; he tore a quad tendon on an awkward hit by Dmitri Kulikov, which required surgery to fix.  Roy was the teams leading scorer when he was injured with 10 goals and 25 assists in 35 games.

This latest injury to Connolly is certainly not helping the injury riddled Sabres.  They are already missing Jason Pominville, who left Game 5 after being cut by a skate near his ankle, Jochen Hecht, who is suffering from an upper body injury has missed 11 games, Shaone Morrisonn and Andrej Sekera are also suffering from the ever mysterious upper body injury have not played since Games 1 and 2, respectively.