I didn’t blog the Sabres home opener on Thursday night against LA, but I actually thought they played decent in their loss, despite the offense not getting on the board more than once and in a loss. But I guess that’s my expectation for this team, good efforts in losses. How pathetic. Regardless though, they played much better in that game than they did in the two Global Series games in Prague against the Devils.

Tonight the Stanley Cup Champions came to town and the Sabres picked up their first win of the season, in a solid team effort, beating Florida 5-2.

Florida took a 1-0 lead 9:01 into the game, with poor defensive play in transition

as Nate Schmidt walked right in the slot and picked without anyone jumping on him on a relatively easy goal. The Sabres tied it up though with 3:14 left in the first with Jordan Greenway getting a rebound right in front and putting it past Spencer Knight. Less than a minute later, with 2:33 left, Tage Thompson got a quick shot off of a nice pass from Alex Tuch and beat Knight five hole to give Buffalo a 2-1 lead. Pretty good period for Buffalo, generating some really good chances despite getting outshot 10-6, but getting rewarded with a 2-1 lead after 20 minutes.

The Sabres picked up their first two goal lead of the season Henri Jokiharju ripped a shot from the point on a really nice sustained position from Buffalo 1:34 into the period as they made it 3-1. Buffalo added to their lead with 3:38 left in the second, as Samuelsson capitalized on Spencer Knight being completely out of position, making it a 4-1 game in the Sabres’ favor. Before the period ended though, Sam Bennett redirected Sam Reinhart’s shot in front to make it a two goal game once again with 1:18 left on the power play. Another good period for Buffalo. Let’s keep it up!

With 1:12 left in the game, Alex Tuch ended the game with an empty netter to give the Sabres a 5-2 victory for our first win of the season.

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Although I lost my bet against them tonight, it was good to see this team get their first win of the year against the Cup Champs, even with Florida’s lineup depleted. We outshot the Panthers 27-25 but generated an expected goal rate of 4.18 to Florida’s 1.99, having a lot of solid opportunities to score and capitalizing when they need to. Good win tonight, let’s see if we could build on it.

Go Sabres!

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