So About This Year’s Team…
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 12:17 am by mrenninger
I have been saying it to friends for a couple months now, albeit with a slight fear that I was simply being irrationally optimistic, looking for any reason to have lofty expectations for a team that had disappointed us all over the previous two seasons. While I harbored these expectations I made sure to be keenly aware of our shortcomings, whatever they may be week-to-week. I was slow to like, then accept Montador as even a serviceable defenseman, slower to accept Tallinder’s now undeniable resurgence (I can’t say I know more about talented defenseman than those who put together the Swedish Olympic Team), and well, I’m still working on Lydman and Sekera. However, for a night none of that should matter because this team, as a whole is showing us that they have the toughness, the tenacity and the talent that has been missing the past two seasons.
The Sabres ended 2009 on a good note, coming back to beat the cup champs 4-3
The Stanley Cup Champions came into HSBC Arena earlier tonight with two of the best players in the game and just the second-best Canadian goalie and defending Conn Smythe winner on their roster. Our own all-world goalie was downright pedestrian, giving up two goals that earlier in the season never would have found the net. The Penguins were on the road with a 3-0 with the Sabres best player leaving the ice to take a seat on the bench for the rest of the game. No one would have been surprised, and no one would have really jumped on the Sabres had they packed it in, as like many, many nights over the past two years, the Sabres simply didn’t have it. No one would have raised an eyebrow at a 6-1 final score, and no one would have panicked. Teams have rough spots, it’s a long season, the Pens are a great team, Miller can’t be perfect every game. Out the excuses would have trotted, not that they would have been bad ones either. But a funny thing happened on the way to reading them in tomorrow’s Buffalo News…
Stafford's penalty shot gets the comeback going...
It sounds silly to say, but I think we all want to say it: there’s just something. Patrick Lalime, who had Sabres fans itching to pack his luggage and sell his house for him, comes in and has his third outstanding outing in a row, when it appeared to be nothing more than a conditioning assignment. Tyler Myers, the rookie defenseman charged with putting the cap on Malkin and Crosby not only did so, but put Malkin on his rather large behind with timing running out to stymie what could have been a tying opportunity. Pominville, who has gone through some rather long stretches of looking pedestrian, of being just another body on the ice taking up space, ripping the game winning goal off the post and in to add yet another Sabres player with 10 goals this season. And finally, Stafford, goalless in fifteen outings, forced to watch the St. Louis game from the press box, nets the first two goals and makes a gorgeous pass to Gaustad for the tying goal.
(A quick aside about the penalty shot goal: was anyone else wondering why it was the ice cold Stafford and not Macarthur, who was also on the ice, who was chosen to take the shot? If the penalty shot comes in a one-goal game, with Miller in net, do you still make the call? I don’t think I have the grapes to pick the guy who hasn’t scored in fifteen games. I hope all the irrational “Fire Ruff” fans on there remember that decision.)
This team is by no means perfect. The still need another forward, and I’m not going to abandon my call for a backup goaltender, but if this is the Lalime we can expect, or if we can even expect 75% of this Lalime, I’m all for putting that money elsewhere. I guess they make fake hips a lot better than they did in Bo Jackson’s day. But this team has a knack for comebacks, a determination to buckle down when they have to, shut down an explosive offense and go to work to win a game. And they way they do it, in such a business as usual way, is something that we have not seen since…well, you know the season. It’s the feeling that this team can do anything, that on any given night they can skate and beat the best- and the worst- in the league, starting goalie, backup goalie, injured enforcers, unproductive forwards, bumbling defenseman, it doesn’t matter. Down three goals against the defending cup champions? It’s alright, just go to work boys.
So with the last game of 2009 in the books, and one game to go before the halfway point of the season, its okay to watch this team with an incredulous smirk sometimes, and say to yourself: I don’t know what it is, but there’s just something.
This team is pretty damn good.
Keep makin' believers out of us Lalime...