After watching the events of the Sabres and Senators game Thursday night, everyone knew that the rematch Saturday would be a doozy. I’m not going to lie, the fight in Thursday’s game was fun to watch, but the events that preceded it were very unfortunate. Depending on who you ask, some people are going to say that Chris Neil’s hit on Chris Drury was dirty and late and illegal. In the days following the game, video showed that the hit occurred less than half a second after Drury had released a shot, so it really wasn’t an excessively late hit. There were two things that I saw that make me feel that the hit was not so much dirty as it was questionable. First of all, Neil came from behind Drury so he never saw him coming and had no way to prepare for the hit. Secondly, Neil definitely went for his head. He didn’t hit him with his elbow, but he made sure that his shoulder caught Drury in the head. The original hit coupled with drury hitting his head on the ice, knocked him silly and gave him a concussion. On the next shift, Ottawa coach Brian Murray had to know that there would be something brewing. He put out the line consisting of Dany Heatley and Jason Spezza. Lindy Ruff and Buffalo countered with their 4th line. Not long after the face off, all hell broke loose. All players on the ice squared off including the two goalies. There is nothing as amusing as watching goalies fight. With all that equipment they end up throwing punches like midgets, barely able to get their arms around to make any kind of significant contact. As much talk that has gone on because of the hit on Drury and the resulting fight, there is one thing that has failed to get a whole lot of attention. After goalies Emery and Biron squared off and the fight appeared to be dying down, Buffalo’s Andrew Peters, who was unable to get into a good scrap with Spezza went skating around looking for someone to throw with. The only person he found who wasn’t tied up with anyone else was Emery who was just getting up off the ice from his little scrum. Sure as hell, Peters engaged Emery. It’s not like he was just looking to wrestle around with him, and next thing you know he’s throwing bombs at Emery who did his best not to get his face bashed in and all the while had a huge smile on his face. Peters is a fighter, and provides little else but muscle to the Sabres lineup. But what kind of hack goes after a goalie, a guy he knows won’t be able to fairly fight back? What a big tough guy. First of all, I couldn’t believe that Peters was actually trying to beat the hell out of him. Secondly, where the hell was somebody from the Senators? You can’t tell me there wasn’t one guy for the Sens that had the balls or the common sense to come to the aid of their number 1 goalie. Frankly nobody coming to help him out was as gutless as Peters himself.
Anyways, Saturday’s game did not disappoint. The first period started out a little slow, there was a few scoring chances, but only one goal, and not quite the physicality that I was expecting. All of that changed in the second period. Ottawa scored 4 unanswered goals to take a 4-1 lead, and the fight everyone knew was going to happen occurred between Peters and Ottawa’s Brian McGratton. The fight occurred after Peters went after Wade Redden after Redden threw a good clean hit in front of the net. Peters tried to pick a fight with Redden, but McGratton stepped in and they were underway. It was a decent fight, but Peters wasn’t quite the Superman he thought hew was when he was fighting a goalie the game before. The rest of the game was exciting as Buffalo came back and Ottawa eventually scored a late goal to pull out a 6-5 win. Chris Neil was involved in a scuffle with Adam Mair after standing up for a teammate. The game was great and fun to watch, but there wsa one thing that was pissing me off the whole time I was watching. I was watching the Buffalo feed on the Center Ice package, and the Commentators and the studio gang are pretty much unbearable to listen to, unless of course you are a diehard Sabres fan. Talk about absolute homers, you almost want to root against the Sabres just so these guys get upset. The whole game the play by play and color guys talked about Emery being out of position or making mistakes when Buffalo scored, but when Ottawa scored on a Ryan Miller giveaway, it was described as a bad break. Frustrating. I wanted to take my shoe off and throw it at the TV. Just call the game, I don’t need your personal feelings getting in the way. They aren’t alone, there are a lot of crews that do this, but not to the extent and with the fervor that these guys do. From here on out, I will not be watching MSGs coverage of Sabres games.
By the way, the Avalanche found a way to lose Saturday night against the Kings in a shootout after coming from a 2-0 deficit to take a 4-2 and then 5-3 lead. This season just keeps getting uglier and uglier. Sunday night, the Avs got down 2-0 again and had to fight their way back against the Ducks. They were able to tie it 2-2 and then 3-3, but with under 4 minutes left in the game, they allowed 2 more Ducks goals and lost 5-3. Now with 20 games left, the Avs are 10 points behind the 8th spot in the West and there is no indication that they will be able to make up that distance and will end up missing the playoffs for the first time since coming to Denver. The question now becomes whether or not the Avs become trade deadline sellers, or hold pat and deal with roster turnover this summer. Hopefully, they don’t any mistakes like last year’s Theodore trade. But right now, nothing would surprise me. The deadline is Tuesday afternoon so we shall see
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