Gaining Ground
Referring of course not so much to the muddling-along,
still-seventh-place Sabres, but the surging Boston Bruins, who by
virtue of a 13-4-4 string find themselves tied with the Sabres
for seventh place in the East as of this writing. Both teams are
perched at 83 points, three back of the Penguins and Flyers.
The stakes are fairly high: the seventh and eighth seeds when the
season mercifully ends will open up the playoffs at New Jersey
and Ottawa, clearly the class of a wild, wacky Conference, while
the fifth and sixth will face Carolina and Toronto.
The Penguins, beset by injuries to key players and rancor between
their best player and their coach, and the Flyers, whose recent
travails we hesitate to call "injury problems" in light of the
Eric Lindros near-tragedy but who, let's face it, have been
missing John LeClair, Mark Recchi and Eric Desjardins, too, would
seem to be ripe for the picking. Unfortunately, Boston seems to
be the team taking advantage in the standings.
The Sabres did beat up Matthew Barnaby and the Penguins for five
out of a possible six points in the last two weeks, contributing
in a big way to Pittsburgh's 0-5-2 slide, but continue to
struggle against the lesser lights.
The fortnight started with a doomed-from-the-start game at Joe
Louis Arena. The game was the Red Wing debut of Chris Chelios,
Wendel Clark and we think possibly Harold Snepsts, played on the
road the night after an emotional, critical tie against
Conference power New Jersey, and the ice sucked big time. Sure,
two teams have to skate on the same ice, but still. Sabres were
slipping around all night.
A hard-fought noontime home-and-home with the Penguins followed.
Barnaby made a spectacle of himself, particularly after scoring
his team's lone goal on the 27th. Rob Ray wasted a double minor
and smacked him in the head on Sunday, though.
Affairs against Chicago and Montreal, 1999 draft lottery
participants, made one wonder why this organization would
mortgage its future by dealing Mike Wilson away.
Monday night the Sabres took points four and five in ten days
from Pittsburgh, prompting Jaromir Jagr and Kevin Constantine to
have it out in a closed-door session afterwards.
The bad news is that of the team's seven remaining games (as of
this writing), three are against the Islanders, Panthers and
Capitals. The worse news is that they get Ottawa and Jersey on
the wrong ends of back-to-back games.
After the April 6 game against the Islanders, the Sabres will
have one game in hand on both the Penguins and the Flyers. The
Bruins will have six remaining, same as Buffalo. See schedule
below.
Juneau and Warrener Join the Fun
The team acquired Joey Juneau and Rhett Warrener at the deadline,
but just as significant, it cleared out some extra bodies in Mike
Wilson and Derek Plante, the latter of whom wasn't playing much
and the former who shouldn't have been. Now guys like Randy
Cunneyworth and Domenic Pittis can sit in the press box during
the playoffs instead of a couple of youngsters with grudges.
Juneau hasn't helped a woeful power play, ranked around 25th in
the league still since his acquisition, but Warrener has
impressed with his un-Wilsonlike taking of the body. What is
this thing called "bodycheck" you speak of?
Hasek Has Small Hernia
Dominik Hasek left the team for a couple days after the trade
deadline to see a soft tissue specialist in Munich. He was
diagnosed as having a "small hernia," something you wouldn't
think it would take a trip to Germany to discover, but what do we
know.
As someone who once had a small hernia, until it got a lot bigger
trying to carry a dresser down the stairs, you can't help but
wince every time Hasek does the splits. He claims to have quite
a load off his shoulders now that he knows why he's still got
that twinge down there, so I guess we're all for that.
Remaining Schedule
|
|
|
4/7 |
4/8 |
4/9 |
4/10 |
4/11 |
| Buf (6) |
|
|
|
|
Fla |
@Ott |
|
| Phi (5)
| |
|
|
Pit |
|
@Wsh |
|
| Pit (5) |
|
|
|
@Phi |
|
|
@Det |
| Bos (6) |
|
|
@Fla |
@TB |
|
TB |
|
|
4/12
|
4/13
|
4/14 |
4/15 |
4/16 |
4/17 |
4/18 |
| Buf
| |
@Phi |
NJ |
|
|
@Bos |
Wsh |
| Phi |
|
Buf |
|
|
@NJ |
|
Bos |
| Pit |
|
|
|
@Bos |
|
NYI |
@NYR |
| Bos |
|
|
|
Pit |
|
Buf |
@Phi |
