Dahl-er, Dah-ler Bill, Y'All (sabres)

sabres

Dahl-er, Dah-ler Bill, Y'All

By GARTH'S CORNER

Nov 18, 2018 • 5:40 pm

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Saturday night's alright for comebacks.

The Buffalo Sabres (12-6-2) proved the Minnesota Wild that they are to be taken seriously and that their recent five-game win streak is not a fluke.

Hockey Night. Twin Cities, State of Hockey.

Jason Pominville, Casey Mittelstadt, Marco Scandella and the Buffalo Sabres found themselves on a brutal back-to-back. Buffalo defeated Winnipeg 2-1 on Friday night while the Wild were home and cooled out waiting for Eichel and Company.

It was another game where the Sabres started slow and found themselves trailing on the scoreboard. It was another game where the Sabres bent but didn't break from the pressure and adversity.

Another game where the Sabres never surrendered, fought back to tie the game then took the lead. Another game where the Sabres erased a deficit and rallied to win.

Another Stanley Cup contender bites the dust.

Trailing 2-0 after a slow start to the game, the Sabres were boxed in. The Wild are a great checking team and silenced Buffalo's top line of Jeff Skinner, Jack Eichel and Samson Reinhart for the first forty minutes of play.

The Sabres needed a hero, Again. Then Swedish Shape Shifter Rasmus Dahlin answered the bell and found Jake McCabe for a beautiful back door tap-in goal to cut the lead to 2-1.

Then, the 18 year old Dahlin lit the lamp to tie the game at 2-2.

Dahlin didn't score a fluky goal. No way.

He took the puck to the dirtiest of dirty areas below the dots where he took on bruising forward Marcus Foligno head to head. Rather than panic and cough up the puck, Dahlin trusted his instincts, deked, dazzled then delivered a dart to McCabe who was all alone at the far post for the tap-in.

Coaches can't draw this play on the dry erase board because it requires such an elite level of intelligence and skill to execute it. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what makes Rasmus Dahlin a generational talent. He sees, thinks and plays the game at such a high level and his hockey IQ is off the charts.

Dahlin has scored 10 points in his first 20 NHL games. Dahlin is now tied for the NHL rookie scoring lead for defensemen and tied for 4th in overall rookie scoring.

Dahlin scored 1G,4A in the first 16 games.

However, Dahlin has scored 1G,4A in the last 4 games.

The goals by McCabe and Dahlin were the ninth and tenth goals of the season by Sabres defensemen. Phil Housley preaches that his defensemen be involved up ice every shift. Boy, were they ever in Housley's home state of Minnesota.

In an effort to kick start offense from his forward group, Housley reunited theSkinner-Eichel-Pominville line.

Three games prior, Housley moved Samson Reinhart up to RW with Eichel-Skinner and that trio paid dividends. The Wild neutralized the Skinner-Eichel-Reinhart trio for most of the game which prompted Housley to get Pominville more minutes with Eichel-Skinner.

Skinner-Eichel-Pominville scored 43 points in the ten games they played together beginning on October 20 in Los Angeles.

The 53-9-29 scoring magic is still alive and kicking.

With the scored tied at 2-2 with 90 seconds to play in regulation, Housley's intuition proved true when the former Wild star Pominville threw a backhander past Devan Dubnyk to give the Sabres the 3-2 lead that they would make hold up.

Pominville's G DUB:

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Hockey is so fun. #LetsGoBuffalo ⚔️

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Each and every point that Pominville scores this season for the Sabres moves his further up the Sabres' all-time scoring great list.

Linus Ullmark made 38 saves on 39 shots faced. Ullmark is now 4-0-1 with a 2.65 GAA and .922 save percentage.

The Sabres are getting balanced scoring through their entire lineup. Housley is gettting primary, secondary and tertiary scoring from all four forward lines and all seven D.

The win against Minnesota gives Buffalo its first five-game winning streak since March 19 to 27, 2012.

The winners of six of their last eight games, the Sabres travel to Pittsburgh to play the slumpiing Penguins on Monday night.

The Sabres now find themselves in 4th place in the Eastern Conference standings and 5th overall in the NHL.

With 2 assists against the Wild, Jack Eichel passed Sabres legends Michael Peca and JP Dumont to move into 47th place in Buffalo Sabres history with 122 assists.

Eichel now has 22 pts in 20 games this season and 199 career points in 229 games.

Sabres fans are worried about Eichel's goal scoring production since he only has 4 goals in his first 20 games played this season. Y keep telling you people to pump your brakes. Eichel is fine. He will end up scorig 25-30 goals this season to go along with his 7-0-75 assists.

Just relax!

**

The 2018-19 Buffalo Sabres are a dramatically better team than the 2017-18 version of the Sabres:

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