Sabres have the Blues after "embarrassing loss"
By Rick Anderson
Saturday, November 27, 1999

The St. Louis Blues came into Marine Midland Arena and handed the Buffalo Sabres their heads on a platter by beating them 2-0 in a game where the Blues made the Sabres look like Thanksgiving leftovers.

"We wasted Marty's best game of the year. The game was embarrassing," said Sabres coach Lindy Ruff. "Marty was obviously the only guy who got anything accomplished. They ran us out, they owned us in our own end. We just got our heads handed to us."

Martin Biron makes a great stop on Jochen Hecht from point blank range

The Sabres seemed to have trouble skating as they were falling over their own feet throughout the game and could not penetrate the Blues defense. The Blues who have limited opponents to a league low of 24 shots per game, cut the Sabres 5 short of that mark. By getting 19 shots on goal and only 4 in the first period, the Sabres dug their grave early and the Blues took advantage of a couple pre-Christmas gifts to score twice in the second period.

For the second time this season, the Sabres had a chance to go over .500 for the first time and fell completely on their faces. The question now is whether the players feel that reaching .500 is a great accomplishment and they become full of themselves when that goal is accomplished.

About the Sabres inability to get over the .500 mark, Ruff said, "I can't explain it. We've been there twice. We've played so well at home, to have this happen was just disappointing. We've played some great hockey and our first periods have been our best. Tonight we had a first period that was our absolute worse, it took us out of the game. Some of that was St. Louis just coming out and taking it to us."

Biron was the only Sabre playing last night as he made 34 saves and had one of his best games in the NHL. Several of his stops were reminiscent of the Dominator and Biron even came all the way out to the blue line to stop a breakaway ala Hasek.

"He made some spectacular saves that people only felt that ‘Dom' could make," Sabres captain Michael Peca said. "So he kept us in there, did his job, and it was just everybody else weren't here to do theirs."

Meanwhile, down at the other end of the ice, Jamie McLennan had an easy time of it in recording his sixth career shutout by stopping only 19 shots. After handling 4 shots in the first, McLennan had to be his sharpest in the second period when he had to turn aside 10 shots. The Sabres did put more pressure on him in the third period, but only five shots managed to get through the stingy St. Louis defense.

"It was a real textbook road game, solid defense," said McLennan about the stellar effort in front of him. "A shutout is a product of good defensive play. I had a chance to see a lot of the pucks, had a couple of lucky breaks. That's what you need to get a shutout."

Mike Eastwood and Lubos Bartecko did the damage for the Blues, scoring the game's only goals in the second stanza.

Cory Sarich, who has been playing solid hockey since being called up from the Rochester Americans, had trouble getting it out of the Sabres zone, seemed to overskate the puck and Ladislav Nagy took control of it. Nagy flipped a perfect pass to Eastwood who was alone to Biron's right and he one-timed it to break the scoreless tie. There was no chance of Biron or even Hasek stopping that one.

"That was just a lucky break," Eastwood said. "Their guy just didn't get it out. I came from way back and (Nagy) saw me. He put it perfect; it couldn't have been any better."

Then, with 3:34 remaining in the second period, the Blues put the game away for good. Pavol Demitra got the puck behind the net and made a perfect pass to Bartecko who was stationed right in front of Biron. He flipped the puck top shelf, just a fraction of an inch below the crossbar and behind the Sabres 22 year old backstop. Once again it was a great shot that Biron had little chance of stopping. But after that, the rookie kept the Sabres in the game where they had a chance to win.

Biron still thought he could have stopped the two that got past him. He said, "You look at the shot clock and you say, "They've got 30 shots.' You look at the next shot and say you have to stop it. Even though you look at 30-something shots, I could have stopped both goals. I got a piece of both of them."

"He gave us a chance to comeback," Ruff praised Biron. "Obviously you saw there wasn't a chance of that happening. From playing one of our better games to just playing what I think was probably our worst game of the year."

Ruff was in no mood to find anything positive about the game.

"You could tell after ten minutes (that the team was flat)," said Ruff. "The passes weren't connecting, you know we talked about the last game how well we passed the puck, well it was the complete opposite, a complete turnaround."

St. Louis coach Joel Quenneville was in a much happier mood. He said, "Our defense did an excellent job of standing up. They didn't get a whole lot of opportunities off the rush. They got a speed team, so we neutralized that area pretty well. I thought everybody had a lot of energy. Jamie was solid when called upon, but (it was) a team effort defensively."

The Blues had no trouble skating on the Marine Midland ice, but the Sabres were flopping around all over the ice. Maxim Afinogenov had what appeared to be a sure breakaway when he fell flat on his face. Sarich had trouble skating and controlling the puck on the play that resulted in the Blues first goal. There were more plays where the Sabres fell down on the job than scoring opportunities they produced.

Biron had plenty of outstanding saves. One came in the first period when Afinogenov gave the puck away and Derek King's shot was snuffed by Biron. The most spectacular save came in the second when Biron was lying prone on the ice and Nagy skated towards the open side of the net. He tried to shoot the puck over Biron, but Marty was able to snare it with his glove. In the third, Michal Handzus had a point blank shot on Biron, but the Sabres goalie foiled him.

"They could have easily had 7 or 8," Ruff said about all the opportunities the Blues had. "They ran us out of their end, they owned us in our end - we just got our heads handed to us."

Sabres Captain Michael Peca has had a very frustrating season so far. After scoring a career high 27 goals last season, Peca has only scored 5 and has 8 assists so far. His frustration finally climaxed near the end of the third period when he took a senseless cross-checking penalty that completely eliminated any Sabres chance of coming back. "We were just second to every puck, second to every play. As a result, they were making some great plays and we were really weak," said Peca. "When you get four shots at home (in the first period) when you're really trying to come out and establish something is disappointing. They"ve got one of the best road records in the league and they showed why. There's not many weaknesses in their game and to play the way we did just makes matters worse."

Describing the cross-checking penalty, Ruff said "Needless and frustration is what it was. You could feel the frustration on the bench. I wish somebody would had gotten frustrated in the ten minute mark of the first period and took a penalty like that. You could see that coming, we weren't getting anything done and I think that pretty well sums it up right there."

Brian Holzinger expressed the frustration by saying, "If we're not going to generate much, they're not going to give up much. You can see what happens when you put those two things together."

Lindy Ruff was short and too the point in his post-game press conference.

"They were just that much better," Ruff said about the Blues effort. "They worked that much harder, they skated that much better, they out-muscled us down low. In their zone, it was one check and our play was over. I can't remember one quality chance, maybe there was one really good chance on our part by our forwards, but that was hard to find."

"You have to give them some credit," Ruff continued. "They played extremely hard. But if you want to take a look at their twelve forwards and start comparing, I mean I'd be embarrassed if I were sitting in our dressing room right now. I'm embarrassed, they should be embarrassed too.

"Their defense is good. You've got to work hard to generate some stuff against them and their defensemen. They're strong down low, they make a lot of good plays, but up front their group of twelve totally outworked our group of twelve."

The Sabres travel back to Tampa Bay for tomorrow's 6 PM game where they lost their last contest to the Lightning 4-2. The Sabres have to come up with a much better performance on the road than they did their last time down in Florida if they want to get back to .500 for the third time.

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