In the words of a very famous rabbit, thats all folks. The push for the playoffs came to an end for the Buffalo Sabres last night in Philadelphia after a 2-1 loss to the Flyers. If the Panthers had managed to come back and beat the Capitals last night, there would be very different conversations floating around right now.

It was heartbreaking, to say the least. The Sabres took an early lead on Ville Leino‘s 8th goal of the year, yep thats right people I said EIGHT… Either way, Leino scored late in the second period and it looked like the Sabres were going to pull off another miracle. This team is normally very strong when carrying a lead into the third, but this time they just couldn’t hold on.

Marc-Andre Bourdon tied it up on a booming shot from the blue line that found its way through a screen and past Ryan Miller. That was just around the 6 minute mark of the third period, meaning that should have been plenty of time to pull together and get something done, considering this game meant EVERYTHING for the season to continue. The Flyers responded with physical play that left the Sabres scrambling. Matt Read iced the game with his 24th of the year with 4 minutes remaining in the period.

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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.