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 | Girgensons was the hero in the shootout on Tuesday night, propelling the Sabres to the 4-3 win. | | Raleigh - October 15, 2014 - Following every Sabres game, we’ll be taking a little look at the previous night’s action with a little segment called “good, bad and ugly”. Expect a loooooooot of ugly.
The Good
Marcus Foligno, everyone! Just when it looked like only Tyler Ennis and Zemgus Girgensons would be the only ones to ever score a goal, the big winger comes through with his best game in years. For the Sabres to be better this year, they’d need performances like this out of Foligno. He’s got the size and uses it well, but it’s times like these where he flashes the ability to be a 20+ goal guy and the Sabres could really use a winger with his frame to be that guy. Excellent game.
Despite nearly blowing it at the end, it seemed like the Sabres controlled this one throughout. They took their foot off the petal near the end and let Carolina get back into it, but they played tenaciously and felt like they caused a lot of turnovers. Even more importantly, how about those shot totals? Not only did they only allow 25 (and they won, go figure), but they tallied a whopping 26 of their own, a total that only seemed like a pipe dream after the miserable 12-shot effort against Anaheim. Thorough improvement all around.
The Bad
That late collapse has become a staple of the Sabres for quite a few years now. They grab the lead and then try to sit back on it. That never works and they should know that by now. Sure, they recovered nicely to grab the two points in the shootout, but this is a trend that has to go away starting now. It takes a while to get out of that mentality and it’ll only cost the Sabres points going forward.
Sam Reinhart only got six minutes and change in this one and it seems to me that the decision has been made that he can’t hang in the NHL right now. So that being said, why are they bothering to keep him up here? I swear to Jeebas, if this ends up being another Mikhail Grigorenko scenario, I don’t know what I’ll do. Reinhart is too important to the future health of this franchise to jerk around.
The Ugly
I don’t have much to be truly bothered by in this game, especially given the fact that not only did the Sabres win, but they’re still a pretty awful team when you think about it.
That said, having a two-goal lead on a team like the Hurricanes should be game over as soon as you get that lead. Letting them back in it, especially when just about every relevant name on their roster is injured, is a bit embarrassing. Zach Boychuk and Chris Terry are the heroes? You should be smoking this team no matter who you are.
This Sabres team is going to lose a lot of games and if it wasn’t obvious before last night, it should be now.
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