Despite slide, Sabres on ‘good start’
Ahead of last year after 17 games
Lindy Ruff knew things were getting blown out of proportion. The Buffalo Sabres opened the season 6-0-2, and all of a sudden people were talking Stanley Cup.
“Everybody, including you guys, had us way above where I thought we needed to be,” the coach told the media Monday after practice.
Now Ruff and the Sabres see the opposite happening. They are 1-3-1 in their past five games, and folks are whispering it could be two straight seasons without the playoffs.
“I’m not too worried about it,” forward Daniel Paille said. “Aside from the Columbus game [a 6-1 loss Friday], we’re playing well, just not well enough. It’s a long season. I feel that we can bounce back every game.”
As Paille said, it’s a long season. The Sabres have played only 17 of their 82 games, with No. 18 coming Wednesday in Boston. So far, it’s fair to say the Sabres aren’t as good as their start but are better than their recent five-game record. They’re 9-5-3 and in sixth place in the Eastern Conference with 21 points.
“We got off to a good start,” Ruff said. “We’re still off to a good start.”
That was the Sabres’ goal from training camp. A slow start last year (they were 6-10-1 at this point) weighed on them throughout the season. At least now they can look back at the opening eight games, see what it took to win and try to mimic it.
“Last season, we had the [bad] record from the beginning and tried to find ourselves in a better position, but there was not really a better position all year long,” defenseman Jaroslav Spacek said. “Now we look back at our first eight games. We’re kind of struggling, but we know if we start to play better defensively we’ll be better again.
“Everybody saw how we can play. We can play that type of game, just play defensively, and we can win it.”
The Sabres were happy with the first 50 minutes of Saturday’s 5-2 loss in Pittsburgh. Then the Penguins scored four times in the final 8:17.
“We’ve got to play like we did in Pittsburgh, but just finish the deal,” Ruff said. “I thought that game was a pretty solid game.”
The Sabres were without forwards Tim Connolly and Ales Kotalik against the Penguins, and Derek Roy joined them on the sidelines Monday. The center has a groin strain and didn’t practice.
“We decided to give him an extra day, but it shouldn’t be an issue for Wednesday,” Ruff said.
Connolly was undergoing further tests on the upper-body injury he suffered Wednesday, when St. Louis’ Keith Tkachuk flattened him. Kotalik is nursing a pulled hamstring suffered Friday.
“He’s responding pretty good to treatment, which means it should be on the shorter side of a couple weeks,” Ruff said of Kotalik. “We’ve got to battle through a couple injuries again, which I thought we battled through early in the year.”
It worked then, and they think they’re in position to do it again.
“We’ve got a big week ahead of us: a division game Wednesday and back-to-back home games [Friday against Philadelphia and Saturday against the New York Islanders], so it’s very important,” Spacek said. “I think we’re coming back to how we played the first eight games. You can see that. We’re working on it.”
•••
Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller will preside over the Christmas tree lighting celebration at Rotary Rink at 5 p. m. Sunday.
The annual event marks the opening of the free ice skating season at the rink at Fountain Plaza. Festivities start with skating at 4 p. m.
There also will be an exclusive meet and greet session with Miller and some Rockettes. Tickets cost $100 with proceeds going to charity. Tickets include admission to the 7 p. m. Radio City Christmas Spectacular at Shea’s Performing Arts Center.
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