Everything's Bigger in Texas

Including Sabres' combacks. That game sure put Sabres fans in a whirlwind of emotions. We sure didn't get off to a good start with taking two undisciplined penalites (I'm looking at you, Drew Stafford) and allowing Dallas to score both times. When we were down 3-0 I just sat back and thought, "Here we go..." and was expecting a loss. It puts any team in a tough position when they're down by 3 goals, but especially the Sabres considering they had only scored 3 goals in the past 3 games. Did anyone expect them to score 4 goals within the next two periods to earn a victory? I didn't think so. Well color me surprised.

Paul Gaustad was hands down the best player tonight. Not just because he scored two goals, but his effort is just always there. He's not afraid to go in front of the next and take punches from the player's protecting the goalie. And on the other side he's not afraid to stand up for our goalie when players get too close to him. His fight might have sparked the team to play better, which they did in the 2nd period. They were a lot more aggressive and put up a great effort showing that they weren't ready to give up and call it a loss. It seemed in the Chicago game that the team was very quick to give up after giving the 'Hawks life, but last night the Sabres didn't allow that to happen, even after we let Dallas score a quick goal right after we scored to narrow the lead to just 1. We've seen that a lot with this team and it's frustrating. They score a goal to get right back into the game only to allow the other team to score another one right after the fact and then they just sit back and lose. But tonight was different. It shows that the team has enough character to not give up and try their damndest to win. That's reassuring because a lot of times the team's character is questioned a lot by fans when they are losing.

I thought Roy had a very good game too, although I did notice that he tried to do a lot of things with the puck all on his own. He's a very talented player who can sometimes get away with moves like that, but I'd like to see him play a little more simple. Isn't that what they're always preaching? Simplicity? But all in all I thought he played a good game and he was one of our heroes as he scored in the shootout to make sure that the Stars didn't win it. Miller was good, but he wasn't as good as he has been in the past few games. Maybe he was getting back into the groove after having a few days off. But he came up big in the shootout. Looks like he did his homework. He doesn't face those guys a lot considering they're a Western team, but he was right with them in the shootout and he seemed to have a good idea on what they were going to do. I'm always proud of him when I see him come up big in the shootouts because last year he really struggled in the shootout and I knew he was capable of being so much better than that. Towards the very end of the year I noticed he improved vastly in the shootout and I thought to myself that maybe he was back. So far this season he's showed that he is indeed back. Atta boy.

I still can't believe that we won that game. It was almost like my dream I had before the game... except we weren't down by 9 goals. But we did rally to score 4 goals just like in my dream! And the biggest difference from my dream is that we actually won! Since Carolina lost last night to Toronto we now have 2 points on them in the standings. Awesome. We face them on Saturday so that game is going to be huge. I'm going to it, so I'm pretty excited. It's always good to beat the Canes given our history with them, but hopefully the boys will have an added incentive to put them away since they're so close to us in the standings.

Oh and my shopping trip last night was a victorious one! I found the perfect dress for Catwalk and now I'm even more excited than I was before. I can't wait.