#matt and jb truly ate this up

[b3y0ndm3asur3]

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 62 - TOR - For Nathan

There is something deeply satisfying about the Sabres getting a guy rumored to be connected to the Leafs, particularly the day before you play them. It also feels like a trade like this with Anaheim has been in the making forever… like since before Jason Botterill. I’ve read speculation on a big trade for a Ducks defenseman since Eichel’s rookie year. There is no way all those talks built up to this right? Whole new GM yatta yatta yatta. At the very least this move shows Jason Botterill is up to stuff, we have something that is entirely his to point at now beyond the Skinner trade. This move proves JB isn’t asleep at the wheel which was a developing criticism that now gets tabled for at least four months. Getting a cost-controlled young defenseman with some term of Brandon Montour’s stature upgrades the D-core immediately and although past comments lead you to think otherwise it means JB is giving these guys another tool to make the playoffs. That goal has become pretty distant but it’s possible and a two-way puck moving defenseman can’t possibly hurt. That is a vote of confidence in the room. Use it, boys. In Botts We Trust! Early returns on this trade are good and can only get better when he plays against the Flyers tomorrow night. And yes, I will get to Nathan Beaulieu because his departure is somewhat serendipitous. The deadline is done and now it’s the final push for the playoffs no matter who you ask. There is no playoff trash talk I have relished as much as this: We know what the word is in Toronto. A first round exit would be unacceptable: the only thing to truly make this season a failed one for the Maple Leafs. I think I speak for every man; woman and child in Buffalo when I say the Sabres relish the opportunity of serving you a piping hot failed season for dinner in April! It’s only a fighter’s chance but oh that chance alone is worth going to war. Give me Ristolainen and Kadri fucking murdering each other game after game. Give me Eichel and Matthews yucking it up off the ice before putting on the great American gun show on the ice. Give me hordes of the Southern Ontario middle class flooding across the Peace Bridge in their Leafs uniforms only to be sworn at in Tim Hortons! This series is the sleeping giant of the NHL and a playoff series would be the kind of war NORAD worried about in the 80s! The Blue and Gold versus the Blue and White! Let’s do this! Sabres in 7!

There is a former Sabre, former as of about 3:42 this afternoon, who once said: “I have hated them my whole life.” That former Sabre was Nathan Beaulieu and those were the words he shared with the press last season after getting into a wicked scrap with then-Leaf Matt Martin. Yes, he was talking about these Toronto Maple Leafs. He hated them as a Habs fan in his childhood and for a year and a half our boy Nate, lived them as a Buffalo Sabre. I’m not eulogizing a guy who wasn’t good enough to consistently make the bottom defensive pairing but him being dealt the same day as a game against the Leafs felt right. It felt like this game was to be for Nathan! I doubt anyone on the ice was thinking that but nonetheless: FOR NATHAN! The first period of this game, like Sabres first periods often are, was an encouraging display of what this team can do when it plays its game. Buffalo played the kind of defense we can hope gets better with Brandon Montour: frustration. For the entire first frame the Sabres fought a neutral zone battle with the Leafs. The Leafs are good when their goal scorers are given space to be creative. The first period saw very little space for creativity as Dahlin, Bogo, McCabe and Ristolainen broke up passes and stopped the majority of scoring chances before they got into Carter Hutton’s business. Fredrick Anderson on the Leafs end was great as well staying on his game as the Sabres got the most of the period’s shots. He was until very late in the period that is. You could see John Tavares’ frustration when he got called for tripping sending the Sabres to the powerplay. Jack Eichel got the puck alone in the slot and one timed it past a heavily screened Anderson with 53 seconds left in the first. It was a great start for the visitors and you got the feeling we could see the kind of wins we’ve come to expect when the Sabres visit Ontario’s Capital. Then the wheels came off… or someone’s did.

Over the course of 2:04 early in the second period the Leafs scored three goals! Tavares, Matthews and the guy they call goat. All of the sudden it was 3-1 and you could totally see why. The puck watching of the Sabres when they’re NOT doing their thing. When they don’t fight for the puck on the wall and when they don’t breakup passes this team looks gross. We see this periodically roughly ever fifth game and I’ve gotten really tired of it. Against the Leafs its about the worst thing you can do not just because we all hate the Leafs, because, once again, Toronto lives and dies on their offense and when you let that offense breathe, they take up all the air in the room. I will say the goal song is great. I wish it wasn’t the LEAFS goal song but here we are. Good job on that one, Toronto. Now, instead of JT going to the box, it was Carter Hutton getting pulled and flipping shit on the bench. It was Robin Lehner last season and Carter Hutton this season. The Leafs piss off our goalies and I’m sure its not just us. The hard part for Hutton is that he was really beginning to look better and although we may have the patience to keep giving him starts we have a very unforgiving coach behind the bench so Ullmark coming in for the rest of this game may signal Ullmark returning to the level of starts he was getting not too long ago. The middle frame got worse before it got better and old pal Tyler Ennis, a fourth liner on their roster, scored a breakaway goal that may give you flashbacks to the golden era of… 2011? Ok, whatever. There was hope before the next intermission and a couple of compounding penalties gave Buffalo a 5-on-3 opportunity. I openly laughed in my unfaithful pompousness that they could capitalize on the powerplay but lo, it was our bridge beauty Sam Reinhart who took a Skinner pass in front and snuck it past Anderson. It would be 4-2 Leafs going into the third. Sam Reinhart gave us faith.

Jack Eichel gave us hot flashes. A minute had not passed in the third period and he enters the zone riding the circle around the Leafs defenders before roofing it 4-3 Sabres! Eichel was coming in on Anderson like a train locomotive. Anderson dodged Captain Jack, but Jeff Skinner did not and ate ice well Eichel looped back on the celly. The comeback was in motion now and while the shots on goal don’t show it the Sabres were pushing hard for the equalizer. With the Leafs fourth line scoring two of their goals in the second I was really pulling for one of those hard-working fourth line goals from Zemgus Girgensons or Johan Larsson but as close as they got there was no Sabres goal to come. There was one point in this final period when the puck was in play well above the ice and was coming down right over Rasmus Dahlin. Dahlin, who mind you is closing the gap with Elias Petterson in some metric I am too lazy and upset to look up right now, looked like an absolute competitor in this game. He saw the puck coming down and gave it a header to try to maintain possession. He may have the same first name as Ristolainen, but he is really the opposite, at least in possession and defensive zone play. Dahlin’s great play made the final goal of the game all the more heartbreaking when he couldn’t hold the puck in the zone on the Sabres late powerplay. Kasperi Kapanen took advantage of the opportunity and scored the breakaway goal to notch the final score line at 5-3 Leafs. A shorthanded goal with less than three minutes left in a one goal game deflates you like a Patriots Superbowl and this one ended in disappointing fashion. We’ll have to wait for those back-to-back wins we’ve been dying for. One Leafs fan I had an exchange with earlier in the day on twitter came back with that nifty timing after the final horn sounded to tell me the overall series is 18-16 Leafs since 2012. Thanks for that one, bud. My last thought on the Leafs in this will be that all my negative experiences with fans of the blue and white happen online. Literally every Leafs fan I’ve met in person is the sweetest shit ever. Just positive vibes going up the QEW from me after this game but that may not be true again on Saturday when we meet again.

Apologies, this is my longest New Look Sabres yet and I’m not done yet. That said, if you’ve read this far you probably enjoy this so please: like, share and leave a comment. Even if you’re a Leafs fan leave me comment. This blog is a lot more fun when it’s a conversation not a treatise. Some people pointed out with annoyance that Marco Scandella, fresh off the IR, got the third pairing start over Casey Nelson. I understand the frustration; hell, former Leaf Matt Hunwick was the other guy on that pairing! However, we should probably accept who we got for a Coach right now. Barring a shocking locker room cleanout and exit interviews day in April (and yes, start getting used to that probably coming in April) Phil Housley is likely the Coach into next season. The GM made a public vote of confidence in him and this is the bed we’re sleeping in. The Trade Deadline is past. This is the bed we’re sleeping in. Did we miss Scott Wilson? He’s back! This team with all it’s faults and late game collapses is what we got now. In the outside chance they make the playoffs: this is the team that will go. This is the team now… well except for our new friend and first Sabre in #62 Brandon Montour. With the Trade Deadline in the past it forces us to smell our stank and deal with the roster that is; but the other side of that coin is its fun to talk about what a great time that was!

The Trade deadline, hell the build up to it, can really mess with you. You know the endless updating twitter and the rampant speculation from all sectors. On Sunday night I bit on rumors linking Ristolainen to Callahan in Tampa and spent about 90 minutes trying to do the money gymnastics to make that work. The Montour trade put an end to all that in the same way it has reinvigorated all the Ristolainen talk. We all wanted to say that all these abrasive stats nerds were full of shit but we’re smarter than that. We told ourselves: Risto is just poorly utilized! Those arguments muddied the waters enough to cling to our abrasive Finnish sandpaper in back. Rasmus Dahlin changed that conversation and now Brandon Montour changes it again making it even harder to say Risto is bad because he’s been given too much in the way of minutes and workload. As a second pairing guy consistently, he shouldn’t be as statistically poor as he has been but the addition of Dahlin didn’t change that and if the addition of Montour doesn’t change that either we better prepare for a Risto trade by July 1st this summer. I’m not saying it needs to happen but it’s looking that way. That’s not the happiest outcome obviously, we’re all dying to see him in a playoff series but its probably what Botterill does: the last easily movable guy on this team who can actually get some decent assets in return. I feel bad about saying this too, I named my car after our first Rasmus, but if Botts can sell high on him it probably won’t be a move we’ll regret. Don’t factor out a playoff berth yet but focus your angriest passions elsewhere from now on. Get behind these Amerks! This AAF Football League is something! The Bachelor looks like it had a wild episode tonight. Cushion the blow but don’t hop off the roller-coaster just yet. There are still some fun hills and loops left even if its likely it doesn’t end in another, way cooler roller-coaster afterward. They’re back at it with the hot new face tomorrow night in Philadelphia: Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. My wife told me to calm down shortly before the final goal so naturally I was mad. I have proceeded to call her Kasperi for the rest of the night. Steve, should she be happy about that?