Suffering Continues in the Sabrehood, Cup Champs Win 7 to 3 Rout

 

The Buffalo Sabres came into Detroit for the opening game of the 1995 season and were quickly sent home with their first embarrassing loss of the season. The defending SMJ Cup champs seem to have not missed a beat as their team discipline helped propel their special teams into making it a fairly easy night for the Red Wings and their fans. The 7 to 3 beatdown saw a Sabres team take 55 minutes in penalties and spend much of the evening shorthanded and unable to assert any kind of dominance in the game.

 

Surprisingly, the scoring opened up with the Sabres taking a 1-0 lead as star rookie Markus Naslund was able to pick off a point to point pass while on the penalty kill and streak up ice to beat John Vanbiesbrouck on an early short-handed breakaway. It didn't take long for the Red Wings to tie things back up as young star Alex Mogilny was able to even the score just 5 and a half minutes later. Despite the wide open back-and-forth pace of the opening period, Vanbiesbrouck was able to shut the door and the Sabres' starting goaltender Al Jensen wasn't. A trio of Red Wings goals put the champs ahead and created a lead that the Sabres would be unable to overcome throughout the rest of the game. Shots in the 1st period were 15 to 13 in favor of the Red Wings to end the period.

 

The 2nd period was another lop-sided one on the score sheet despite the teams being pretty close to one another in shots on goal and scoring chances. The Red Wings struck on the powerplay just over halfway through the period with Carson's 1st of the season. Just 3 minutes later, Chabot scored his 1st of the season and helped further embarrass the Sabres as they still had over 20 minutes left to play. Shots ended up being 7 to 6 in favor of the Red Wings once again.

 

In the final frame, the Sabres did manage to push back a little bit. Just 5 minutes into the period, newly acquired Marty Ruff scored his 1st goal of the season on a nice D to D pass from Paul Reinhart. Sadly, the Sabres' inability to stay out of the penalty box continued to hurt them as Alex Mogilny managed to pot his 2nd of the game on the powerplay shortly after Ruff's goal. Another shorthanded goal from the Sabres brought them back to within 4 goals of the Wings, when Free Agent signing Tom Fitzgerald scored with just over 6 minutes left in the game. Shots were 11 to 9 to finish the period, once again in favor of the Wings.

 

The Sabres lost horribly at the end of the day once again, but to be fair looked nothing like the hapless team that went out and lost night after night in 1994. While the goalies gave up a lot of goals, the team in front of them did hold strong and stayed tight with Detroit for much of the game. If team discipline wasn't so much of an issue, the momentum of the game could have shifted back into the Sabres' favor and we could have seen a closer result. This version of the Sabres seems to be meaner and much more engaged than last season, and it should be interesting to see how teams respond when coming up against a team that looks much harder to play against.