Sabres raked over hot coals by the Leafs!
By Rick Anderson
February 27, 2000
Just when you thought the Sabres were ready to make a serious run for a playoff spot, disaster strikes in the form two humiliating losses. The Toronto Maple Leafs came out of the gates with a dominating performance and beat the Buffalo Sabres 5-2 Saturday night in Toronto's Air Canada Centre. The Sabres had lost at home to the Rangers 6-3 the night before. The back-to-back losses puts the Sabres' playoff hopes in serious jeopardy. Even though they trail the Rangers by only three points for the eighth and final playoff seed in the Eastern Conference, the Sabres are tied for the ninth spot with Carolina while the Canadiens and Bruins are nipping at their heels.
"That New Year's game was a big loss, one that was tough to swallow," said Leafs winger Tie Domi. "But losing to them in the playoffs, that's what left the most sour taste in my mouth. That was the toughest thing to take."
Ever since that New Year's game, the Leafs have been raking the Sabres over the coals. They have scored 6-2 and 5-2 thrashings over their neighbors to the south. Not only have the Sabres allowed 11 goals in their past two games against Toronto, but have allowed the same number in 2 games this weekend..
Including the last five goals scored in the Rangers game, the Sabres allowed 9 unanswered goals in their weekend games. Dominik Hasek, playing in back-to-back games for the first time since coming back from his groin injury, did not have a good weekend at all. He claims that he feels good, health-wise, but he has been tagged for 10 goals in two games. Not quite your Dominator-like performances.
"I don't understand, I feel very good," commented Hasek. "Sometimes you don't feel good and play unbelievable and other times, like tonight, you feel strong and don't play well. You never know."
Hasek cannot shoulder the entire blame for the sudden meltdown of the Sabres defense. The Buffalo bluelines have been missing one key ingredient in Rhett Warrener, who also has an injured groin and it is unclear who long he'll be sidelined.
"Rhett is a very important part of this team, but again there are no excuses," said Jay McKee, Warrener's usual defensive partner. "Obviously he'd help us, but things aren't going our way."
The Warrener-McKee combo has been an important component in the Sabres penalty killing unit. They are also two of the hardest checkers on the team. The injury breaks up the pairing and the Sabres have been allowing a lot more goals ever since Rhett went down.
The Leafs killed off a two-man advantage the Sabres had in the early part of the first period and then opened up the flood gates.
Darcy Tucker passed from behind the Sabres net to Tie Domi, and the Leafs' enforcer buried the opportunity while Hasek was down and out to put the Leafs on the board at the 5:55 mark.
"The more you play the more effective you are and the more confident you are,"said Domi, who also had an assist on Garry Valk's goal in the third period. "I went out early and hit a few guys and knocked their defense off the puck. We're playing a lot better now."
The same cannot be said of the Sabres. Defensive breakdowns and the lack of any kind of hitting game, besides the continued improved physical play of Michael Peca, have cost the Sabres crucial points in the last two games.
Things went from bad to worse for Hasek and his besieged defense. Jonas Hoglund's soft wrist shot somehow beat the Dominator at 6:31 of the first and then Dimitri Yushkevich got off a shot from the point while the Leafs had the man advantage that Hasek could not stop, putting the Maple Leafs on top 3-0. The Leafs fans started to raze Hasek by chanting.... "Haaaaaseeek, Haaaaaseeek, Haaaaaseeek."
The Leafs got another power play goal at 9:57 into the second period when Mats Sundin scored his 27th of the season. The Sabres penalty killing units had allowed 5 short handed goals in two games. That added to the Sabres inept power play makes the Sabres fret any kind of power play.
Rob Ray, who scored the winner in Game Four of the Eastern Conference Finals against these very Leafs last June, scored his first regular season goal in two years when he ended Joseph Curtis' shutout bid 3:06 into 3rd period when Geoff Sanderson fed him right in front of the Leafs' goal. Razor hammered it home with a vengeance.
"It was just a matter of going out and working," Ray maintained. "We had very little of that. They came at us right from the beginning and had us on our heels. The farther it went, it seemed like the less effort we got. That's something to be concerned about."
Garry Valk scored his ninth of the season 6:39 into 3rd period to make it 5-1 and end any possible hopes the Sabres had of coming back. The Sabres did score a power play goal when Stu Barnes collected his 14th, but there was under a minute left in the contest, so it was of little consequence.
"There's no way to explain it," fumed Ray. "These are games we have to win "We should have been able to rebound from (Friday's loss.) We should have redeemed ourselves. You can sit there and the only way you have to explain it is that from night to night we don't have enough individuals ready to play. It seems like the game is starting, and we're going to have to come from behind, or we have to get off to a bad start and we have to battle back."
The two losses come at a time when the Sabres have to be playing their most desperate hockey. The only player on this squad who is playing with any kind of desperation is captain Michael Peca. Peca continued with his ferocious hits Saturday, but no one else on the team wants to follow his example. The physical play of the Sabres has been very inconsistent this season. For this team to succeed, it must pick up its hitting attack and knock the opponents off their game. By playing the usual laid back style that has been so evident throughout this season, it opens the door for an all-out attack on the Buffalo goalies.
"There's no excuse," said McKee, one of the Sabres' most physical players. "We're at a time of the season when every game is very important."
The Sabres go to Florida for a game against the Panthers Monday night. They play three more on the road before finally coming back to Marine Midland Arena on March 8th to start a 3-game home stand.
"These five games are huge," said Patrick about the road trip. "I guess we can't look past any one game. We have been saying that we have to play a playoff-type of hockey. Maybe we don't always realize it."
"It was going to be a make-or-break road trip no matter what," added Ray. "These are must wins. You usually want to go on a road trip and come back at .500, but we want to win them all."
About scoring his fist regular season goal in two years, Ray said, "At this time of year it doesn't matter who scores the goals as long as you score enough to win a game. It's nice to score once in a while, but you're more than willing to trade it in for a win this time of year."
When Tie Domi was asked if he and Ray are now going to change their ways now that they both put in goals Saturday night instead of punches, Domi shot back, "That's a stupid question. I'm not gonna answer it. It's always good games against them. Tonight we were the better team."
"It doesn't take a genius to realize that when you get off to a quick start you dictate the tempo," said Leafs' coach Pat Quinn. "It doesn't guarantee you'll win, but it makes your chances a lot better."
Curtis Brown has played the weekend games and says he is over the mysterious sickness that sidelined him for around two weeks.
"It's a situation where I look back, and I've never had a flu bug or a virus that was anything close to that," said Brown. "You talk to the doctors, and they didn't even know what I had. They just knew I had a virus."
"In this particular case, I had symptoms I had never even heard of," Brown continued. "I couldn't eat. I couldn't drink. And that's tough. You lose energy, and you lay in bed. Your body has to fight until you get rid of it. So many times we get the flu, but it's just a little piece of it. We catch 25 percent of the real deal. This is one of the few times I caught 100 percent of the bug. It was nasty."
"I felt great," Brown said about finally being able to play again. "Questions are going to be asked until you play a game, but I felt fine."
Rhett Warrener is now the latest of Buffalo's famous groin club. Not only has Hasek suffered with groin problems this past year, but quite a few Buffalo Bills (most notably Antowain Smith) and Sabres have been active members of the Groin Club. Buffalo is now known as the Groin Capital of the world.
"It's just a groin strain that didn't get better, it got worse," Warrener said. "We'll wait to see how it feels."
Warrener's problem was not improving and after last Thursday's practice he had it re-examined.
"That's when I knew something was wrong," he said. "I decided to get an MRI to see what was going on."
``Sometimes it's healthy to lose and sometimes it's healthy to realize that you're not as good as you thought you were for a while,'' Mats Sundin talked about the Leafs success. But he could very well be talking about the Sabres. ``With the strong teams and the teams that survive, it seems that when they go through tough times, they fight through it and come out stronger.''
Steve Thomas, playing in his 1,000th NHL contest, said, `More than anything, we remember what they did to us last spring. And we know the possibility is very real that we could meet them again in these playoffs. We want to plant the seed in their heads that it's not going to be anywhere near as easy this time around. We're not just going to roll over. They took it to us in the playoffs last year and there's a bit of redemption there."
"Scoring that many goals against Dominik helps the confidence -- big time," Thomas added. "Any time you can put some past Dom, you are doing something right."''
WATCH VIDEO OF MATTS SUNDIN GOAL....
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The Leafs are still bitter over that New Year's Day 8-1 shellacking the Sabres handed them. They are even more incensed over being denied their first trip to the Stanley Cup Finals in decades by Buffalo.
Darcy Tucker congratulated Tie Domi after the Leafs' enforcer scores first goal of the game against Dominik Hasek (right).
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