Tonight the Sabres picked up a huge win in Montreal, in quite the ugly game, winning 3-2 on the road to tie up the series and take back home ice.
After winning Game 1 in a solidly played game for both teams, we looked so horrendous these last two games, getting completely blown out and embarrassed to go down 2-1 in the series. This game tonight is absolutely a must win after those two games, cause if we lose three in a row here and fall down 3-1 in the series, there’s no chance that we win three in a row to win it in seven. Just so awful those two games on both ends of the ice. HAVE to find a way to bounce back to win tonight on the road. Biggest game of the season.
Lindy made several lineup changes tonight. The biggest one being that he started UPL tonight for the first time of this series. I didn’t think Lyon was the problem through Games 2 and 3, where we got dominated so guess we’ll see. Then Luke Schenn and Konsta Helenius entering the lineup in place of Sam Carrick and Logan Stanley. Guess we’ll see how those turn out.
The Sabres scored first tonight. 6:32 into the game, with Mattias Samuelsson scoring in transition on a beautiful play, starting with a beautiful spin around pass by Josh Doan to Josh Norris over to Sammy. Let’s Go. The Sabres made it 2-0 with Jack Quinn lifting the puck into Dobes’ glove off the rebound of a shot by Helenius going right to the net, which wasn’t called a goal on the ice, but it looked like Dobes’ glove fully crossed the goal line with the puck in it. After a long review, it was determined to be a goal with 11:58 left in the second. Right after that long review, Marty St. Louis immediately then challenged it for goaltender interference. This is fucking ridiculous that we can’t just have all of this done on the original review that got called in from Toronto on the puck crossing the goal line. Then it was in fact determined to be goaltender interference (probably was) and determined to be no goal. I think that was the correct call, and probably could have been called on both Helenius and Quinn on that play, but it doesn’t need to take ten minutes to completely kill any sort of momentum in the game. The NHL does themselves zero favors. What a whole ordeal for fucking nothing. Waste of ten minutes. A couple minutes later, with 9:52 left in the first, Alex Newhook got his sixth goal in the this series, with the Sabres not being able to clear the puck, with Jake Evans back handing a sick pass from behind the net to a wide open Newhook right in front to tie the game. Our defense looked so fucking bad again there. After Tage took a stupid, quite soft penalty for cross checking, making it a 4 on 3, Cole Caufield scored to give the Habs a 2-1 lead with twelve seconds left in the period, just a complete momentum killer from stupid penalties going to the intermission, under Luukkonen’s left pad. Alex Lyon would’ve made that save. I know the call on Tage there was ridiculous, but UPL fucking sucks. This period was fucked. The refs did us zero favors on all the stupid calls, but we didn’t stay out of our own way. Still looked way better than our last two games though.
Of course pretty quick into the second period, we take yet another dumb penalty. We killed it off, but you know you have to win this game. Stay out of the fucking box. After two awful plays by Jack Quinn (I still don’t know how people complained about Power and Quinn potentially for Robert Thomas. Too many people listening to the mouth breathing fat fucks on WGR every day), somehow Tage Thompson scored on the power play seven minutes into the second period to tie it up at 2-2, by sheer dumb luck, dumping it into the zone where it bounced off the wall, off Dobes and into the net. Just a completely insane bounce. We’ll take it. Makes up for the stupidity of the first period I guess. We cannot stay out of the fucking box in this game though. Penalty after penalty after penalty. Another stupid period of hockey, and the Habs will start the third with fresh ice on the power play. I’m sure that’ll be another goal. We didn’t play great that period, but at least UPL was decent in goal after giving up the bad one to end the first.
Huge kill for the Sabres to open the third period, then when we went to the power play right after that, Josh Doan set up a beautiful play right in front for Zach Benson to finish for a great backhand goal on his 21st birthday, giving us the 3-2 lead 4:40 into the third. Huge goal from our little rat. The Sabres were able to hold off the Habs and we get a huge win on the road to tie the series back up and take home ice back.
FINAL: Sabres 3, Canadiens 2
Series tied 2-2
Sometimes you gotta win ugly, and that’s exactly what we did tonight. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter, we got the win. After his bad goal he gave up to end the first period, UPL was fantastic in goal for the second and the third to get us this win, making 28 saves on the 30 shots he saw. I thought Montreal was definitely the better team tonight though, outshooting us 30-22. It was just error after error for the Sabres both offensively and defensively, but we found a way to win a must win game. The refs were awful tonight, but we beat them and the Habs. Somehow. The Sabres didn’t do themselves any favors tonight. We played so sloppy for most of that game and couldn’t stay out of the box, and yeah a lot of calls were garbage, and the refs made this game take WAY too long, but who cares, we won.
I don’t think a hockey game has ever felt as rough as a Bills playoff game does every year.
Back to Buffalo on Thursday for a key Game 5.
PS: Holy shit, ESPN’s hockey broadcasts are so bad.
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