Sabres notebook
Briere remains sidelined with groin injury
You won’t have Daniel Briere to boo tonight in HSBC Arena. The former Buffalo Sabres co-captain was Public Enemy No. 1 during his two visits last season with the Philadelphia Flyers, as catcalls filled the building virtually every time he touched the puck because he bolted Buffalo via free agency in July 2007.
Briere has been nursing a groin strain and had targeted tonight’s game as his return date, but coach John Stevens said Thursday that Briere will definitely be out of the lineup.
Briere, who has five goals and four assists in eight games this season, came back quickly from sports hernia surgery earlier in the season. But he hurt the groin last week against the New York Islanders in just his second game back and said this injury has been more frustrating.
“With the sports hernia surgery, every day I came to the rink and I could do something more that I couldn’t do the day before,” Briere told Philadelphia reporters this week. “The improvement from day to day was huge, and I could see a big difference. With the groin, it is frustrating. There are days you come in and you say, ‘Wow, for two or three days, it feels the same.’
“There is one day that it feels better, then you sit there for two or three days without improvement. It is a little more difficult to gauge the improvement. That’s why it is a little more frustrating.”
With Briere out, Mike Richards has been centering the Flyers’ top line between Simon Gagne and Mike Knuble.
Former Sabre Martin Biron is expected to get the start in goal for the Flyers. He’s 5-5 with a 3.12 goals-against average but has a 1.97 GAA in his last four games.
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Sabres winger Thomas Vanek extended his NHL goal-scoring lead with two more in Wednesday night’s 7-4 loss at Boston, giving him 15 on the season in 18 games and putting him in range of breaking Rick Martin’s franchise record for the fastest 20 goals.
Martin reached 20 in 24 games in the 1972-73 season en route to a 37-goal finish. Dave Andreychuk (1992-93) and Danny Gare (1975-76) both scored their 20th goal in 26 games, while Pat LaFontaine (1992-93) reached the mark in 29 games.
Since Jan. 1, Vanek has 40 goals, and that’s second in the league to the 43 by Washington’s Alexander Ovechkin. Vanek has eight multigoal games in that span, tied for second to Ovechkin’s 11.
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Wednesday’s game marked the fifth time in the NHL this season a team had at least a two-goal lead and lost a game by giving up five straight goals. The Sabres led, 4-2, late in the first period but didn’t score again. Anaheim (twice), Nashville and the New York Rangers have been similarly victimized.
The Sabres and Bruins combined for five goals in the first 5:38 of play (three by Buffalo). According to the Elias Sports Bureau, that was the fastest five goals from the start of an NHL game since Detroit and New Jersey combined for five in the first 2:54 of the Red Wings’ 8-5 win Feb. 9, 1993.
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Following practice Thursday, the Sabres had their annual fall meeting with leaders from the National Hockey League Players Association.
Executive Director Paul Kelly and Director of Public Affairs Glenn Healy ran the meeting, which was scheduled to include a video presentation on the dangers of hits to the head.
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