Creepin' On Up

Firstly, I feel as though I should mention the awful tragedy that has hit Taylor Pyatt, as his fiancée was killed in a car accident yesterday while on vacation. My condolences go out to Taylor and his family, and my thoughts will be with them. Hopefully he's given the strength and support he needs during this difficult time in his life.

On a lighter note...with tonight's victory coupled with Florida's loss, the Sabres are still finding ways to make this final stretch pretty interesting. I've said all I want out of this stretch is a playoff berth honest and hard work that hopefully results in wins. Well, tonight we got that.

It was a very fast paced game and I didn't feel as though the team was out of it despite the numerous dumb penalties they took and letting Washington score right after we tied it up. A lot of times you just know a loss is coming, and it's just inevitable that they're going to let the opposing team have their way with them or they're just not going to be able to get it done and score the equalizer. But tonight they kept pressing and I was confident that they were going to net a goal to tie the game. Even after Max scored that goal that was waived off. Which was bogus. I never like it when a player gets penalized for goaltender interference when the goalie's own teammate is the one to push the opposing player into the goalie. So I didn't like it when his goal was waived off after he was pushed into the goalie and didn't go in on his own accord. But I was glad to see Max score another one despite that. Max has looked really good ever since he's been inserted back into the lineup and I was disappointed to see him scratched the past two games. Hopefully he'll stay in the lineup for the remaining 5 games because I really like how he's playing. I thought Derek Roy looked good at times but then he also looked pretty bad. He took some pretty undisciplined penalties and inopportune moments. It was very frustrating to see the team take penalties one after another like that, giving Washington multiple 5-on-3's when they were already up a man. Especially since the Sabres have gotten into trouble with that before. I thought the team really helped eachother out tonight which is what lead them to their victory. Miller let in a few bad and untimely goals, but his teammates didn't give up and they battled back to get to overtime and eventually win the game. And on the other hand, when the team took penalty after penalty, Miller held his ground and came up big to kill off a lot of those penalties.

The best moment of the game for me (aside from Pominville's OT winner) was seeing Miller get all sassy after Ovechkin blew right into him. I don't like seeing any player crash into our goalie like that (especially since Ryan is just coming off an injury), but I got a kick out of seeing Ryan shove Ovechkin afterwords. It was also funny seeing AO's reaction to it...he seemed kind of taken aback. Ovechkin has always amused me (it probably has something to do with him having the enthusiasm of an 8-year-old coupled with the fact that he looks like a caveman) so it was just amusing to see Ryan all pissed off and shoving him while Ovechkin is laying in the crease with a look of shock on his face. Ryan's post-game comments on it were pretty funny too. He said something along the lines of how he wasn't planning on beating Ovechkin up, it was just his way of saying, "What the hell?" to him. Sums it up pretty nicely haha.

So tomorrow will be another interesting night. The Sabres take on the Devils who have been struggling as of late (although they did win tonight in overtime against Tampa) and the Rangers face the Bruins in the afternoon. The Sabres have a game in hand on Florida and a Rangers loss tomorrow coupled with a Sabres win would put the Sabres 2 points back on the Rangers with a game in hand...again, all I'm asking for is an honest, hard working effort and hopefully the good results will follow. I might miss some or all of the game tomorrow due to the fact that I have a date with some shisha and a hookah. I normally don't go out during game nights, but I haven't gotten together with my friends in awhile and I haven't smoked hookah in quite some time. So we'll see when that all happens. Either way I'll record the game on DVR so I'll eventually watch it.

Have a good weekend everyone.