rbochan wrote:
icehound wrote:
These were the players affected by food-poisoning: Nathan Paetsch (would have been a healthy scratch anyway,) Patrick Lalime (bench,) Toni Lydman, Adam Mair, Mike Grier, Craig Rivet, Drew Stafford, Steve Montador & Pat Kaleta (2nd period injury.)
Not to insult these players, nor their nightly effort - But, these aren't exactly Hossa and Gaborik and Ovechkin and Nash and Lacavalier we're talking about...
...and the others? What about them? Did they get "sympathy pains", or something?
Sekera? Roy? Connolly? Pommers? Vanek? Hecht?
TOI:
Roy-21:28
Pominville-20:24
Vanek 20:20
Connolly 19:41
The score should have been 18-2 Sabres.
It's game 32 and they just got shut out by a division rival with 6 starters on their injury list. In a game where Ryan Miller still managed to keep them in the game for 58 minutes. The top 6 couldn't even muster one single goal to make a game of it?
The Sabres top 6 is the reason tey lose games. Not the defense, not the goaltending, and certainly not the bottom 6.
I shall from hereon in refer to the "top 6" as Royminvanolly. The brat pack.
The top 6 weren't signed by Buffalo to outscore Gaborik, nor were they signed to rack up the same amount of assists as Joe Thornton.
They were signed to
win.So far, all season long, that's what they've done. But for some reason, some of you are so stat crazy, that you fail to recognize the job they've done and insist that every single loss of the season is their fault due to a lack of offensive production.
Well to me, the measure of a good hockey player is the amount of goals they create for their team versus the amount that they surrender. And that STARTS with being able to play defensively.
The Buffalo Sabres are one of the best defensive clubs in the NHL, sure partially due to Ryan Miller. He's been fantastic.
But I've also watched Derek Roy make sprawling poke checks on the back check to prevent goals from being scored.
I've seen Jason Pominville rush the puck carrier and force him to dump it resulting in a change of possession.
I've seen Thomas Vanek out skate Alexander Ovechkin and strip him of the puck.
I've seen Tim Connolly break up passes that would result in one time shots and possible goals.
I've seen our top 6 shut down every other clubs' top 6 and chip in goals as well.
Point is, anyone who thought we'd be getting some kind of insane scoring from this group of forwards thought wrong, and can't realistically expect that.
What you CAN expect out of this group, is an impressive effort on most nights, which is all you could ever expect out of any hockey club.
My question is, how many games in a row does this team need to win before they lose one to prevent you all from going ballistic on players about the loss? 10? 20?