The Sabres ended a three-game losing streak Saturday afternoon against the Columbus Blue Jackets in what was at best a dull game capped off by a flash of brilliance from their captain. The game was a microcosm of the Sabres at their best. Boring, defensive and Jack Eichel doing a lot of the heavy lifting to win the game. However, when you drop three straight and fans start making parody music videos about the state of your team, you’ll take the wins any way you can get them.
The Sabres opened the scoring with just under four minutes remaining in the first, as Evan Rodrigues took a pass from Rasmus Dahlin coming in from the point, and wired one past Matiss Kivlenieks from the high slot.
This doesn’t get talked about nearly enough but Dahlin’s evasive maneuvering at the blue line is a treat to watch. Early in the season when the pressure of a top pair role was getting to him, Dahlin was fumbling the puck more often than not in those situations. Since his return from the concussion he sustained against the Tampa Bay lightning, Dahlin has been making plays like these fairly regularly. He’s turning what are normally low percentage shots into nowhere (or someone’s shin guard) into meaningful chances. The Sabres have a plethora of NHL defenders, but hardly any of them can make these plays with any sort of consistency. It’s something to keep an eye on down the road in the off season, whether or not the Sabres choose to address this on the blue line.
The Blue Jackets would tie the game early in the third period thanks to some misfortune and a terrific shot from Oliver Bjorkstrand. Gustav Nyquist gains the zone for the Jackets in what seemed like a harmless play, however Jake McCabe misses his hip check on the Swedish forward, taking him out of position and creating a 2-on-2 chance. Nyquist tries to find Pierre-Luc Dubois in the slot but his pass is deflected by a sprawling Henri Jokiharju. Unfortunately for Jokiharju, he deflects this right to Bjorkstrand who makes no mistake.
Regulation time wasn’t enough but Jack Eichel only needed 36 seconds of additional time to seal the victory for the Sabres.
There are some players in the league where you just know once they’ve collected the puck in open ice they’re about to do something special. Even in the midst of all that has gone wrong with this year’s Sabres, Eichel has taken his game to that level, where you just know something is going to happen once he takes charge.
Shot chart and heat map
naturalstattrick.com
Notes:
Goaltending
Carter Hutton put up another good performance yesterday as he tries to turn around what has been a tough season. We’ve seen Hutton go on good runs but the demands of a starting goalie have proven to be overwhelming for him in the past. The Sabres obviously don’t want to feed rookie Jonas Johansson to the wolves but they also won’t want to put Hutton in a position to start too many games in a row. The Sabres host the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday and the Detroit Red wings on Thursday, and I suspect Johansson gets the call against the worst team in the NHL.
Secondary Scoring
It’s a broken record but the Sabres on paper second line continues to look something like trying to fit different pieces from different puzzles together. Those struggles continued yesterday as the line centred by Marcus Johansson, anchored by Jeff Skinner and Michael Frolik posted the worst on ice results of any line. Oddly enough though, they received largely heavy defensive usage. Skinner only saw 3 of his 12 zone starts come in the offensive zone. At the opposite end Johan Larsson, who typically sees most of his starts come in the defensive end, actually saw an even split in offensive and defensive usage.
As I mentioned in the previous blog, Skinner and Larsson have had success playing together in the limited time that they did. If Ralph Krueger is looking for some balance through his lineup, he’s probably better off having Larsson and Skinner together. The two seem to complement each other’s styles of play well and would likely be able to handle slightly higher defensive zone starts. This would also allow Krueger to move Johansson from the defensive role he found himself in yesterday, finishing with an offensive zone faceoff percentage of 15.38 (2/13).
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