matter2003

Just two brutal goals to allow within 50 seconds of each other. This team is determined to single handedly prove the old adage that no lead is ever safe.

Dunleavy is out to lunch on this broadcast...but I guess what's new. Irritated I am forced to watch the MSG broadcast as they don't have an away feed. Girgensons all alone in front of Detroit net on pass from Krebs and get stopped and Dunleavy announced it like he shot the puck from center ice. He should not be on the radio ever. You literally have no clue what's going on in the game.

Outside of shootouts, Lehner put up some good numbers

I was crying in my family room and my wife was hugging me

Too bad Baltimore doesn't either. You are misremembering...had a chance to take care of our own business with Pittsburgh when they played 2nd and 3rd stringers and puked all over ourselves at home.

Hopefully they loosen up the grip on their sticks now and take the lumps of coal from out between their butt cheeks that they played with last game. You always know when they are uptight because their offense goes straight down the toilet. They miss shots they normally don't miss and they don't generate the type of chances they normally generate even when they are pumping out shots, they are mostly of the not great variety. There is a happy medium between them playing loosey-goosey defensively and them playing so uptight that they can't produce any offense and they still struggle to find it too often in games. Likely will come in time but they need to figure it out for next year. The game for them was perfectly summed up in 2 plays by 2 stars over the last 15 seconds. Tage Thompson completely whiffing on his normal one-timer right in the wheelhouse and Dahlin making a pass so bad back to the point that it went out of the zone to effectively end the game when they had a 6 on 3. Pretty much a fitting ending to how the other 59+ minutes went for them.

So you automatically assume Levi will fail based on what exactly? Because other players have? Tom Barrasso played pretty well as an 18 year old... This isn't 1980 anymore when young players had to play in the minors no matter what because everyone thought they could never play in the NHL as 18 or 19 year olds...until a whole bunch of them got a chance and played really well and now it's fairly common place with high picks. The Sabres didn't burn a year on his ELC to send him to the minors next year. There is this myth that somehow players get ruined if they aren't put into some perfect situation. No offense, but if a player is that mentally fragile, they weren't going to make it anyway. Apparently there is some revisionist history that these players who crashed out of the NHL would have somehow been perennial All-Stars if only they were coddled like a spoiled 5 year old for a few years and protected like a fragile little flower. Not buying it. They would have sucked regardless and found some other way not to overcome their mental fragility. But now we get to hear them all pull the Uncle Rico "if coach would have just put me in the championship game back in 1982, things would have turned out different...". No it wouldn't have.

Carter Hart has been a starter since he was 20. Levi is better than Hart. Some players you just have to let play. He is clearly good enough to play here. Let him play.

Levi is the starter going into next year. There is no reason for him to play in the AHL, he can improve while playing here...it's obvious he is the best goaltender on the roster currently. He has next level movement skills. He looks like he is moving at 1.5x the speed of our other goalies. That was obvious by the end of the 2nd period of the first game. He is making spectacular saves look easy because he is covering up the entire net before the pass even gets across. On that save against Duclair last night, he literally had nowhere to put the puck. Yes it was an amazing save simply by him getting across, but because he got across so fast it ended up being more of a routine save. There is no valid reason he is not the starter next year in Buffalo. He can handle it. He is built differently from most 21 year olds. He thrives under the pressure and wants it.

The second goal was a direct result of Skinner getting manhandled by Tkachuk along the boards and moved off the puck.

My hope is the Sabres can make a Devil's "lite" leap...they were awful last year and finished with 63 points so it's unrealistic to think the Sabres will make a 50 point leap while finishing 25ish points ahead of them last year but if they could make another 20-25 point leap that would do nicely...

Hoping for something similar to a New Jersey Devils like jump next year...obviously we will likely be about 25 points better by season's end than they were when they finished with 63 points so I doubt we will see a 50+ point jump like they will likely have, but I think a 20-25 point jump for next year might not be out of the question, especially if Levi proves to be as good as he looks like he will be on a regular basis next year. Some more development, a few key players acquired this off-season and maybe a new face or two from Rochester will hopefully lead to something similar.

Last year is last year. Florida has been a meh team all year. They couldn't even hit the net on the majority of their good chances

They are fast enough they should be able to exploit that. Why they haven't figured out how to when it's happened so many times is starting to worry me a little.

Maybe but what if this is who they are when pressure hits and it never gets any better?

Once again when the pressure is on, they come up small. At least they didn't get completely blown out like they have the other 4 or 5 times.

Agreed...he is tremendous already. Easily their best goalie after watching him for 2 games. He makes so many saves just look easy.

That goalie has played tremendously well and won 4 straight games, the Panthers longest winning streak of the year. Not going to lose many games with a .959 save percentage.

Thompson's fan on the one timer was appropriate. He was awful tonight.

That was a God awful shift to open the 3rd

Goalies are both playing very well. Levi is a revelation. Unless something REALLY goes wrong over these last few games, he is the number 1 goalie heading into next year unquestionably.

This has been a really good game so far...fighting for every inch of ice out there

Damn...offsides

A lot of people have died in Russia the last few years under "mysterious circumstances". That country is imploding.

Most ISPs don't really care. But VPNs are good to get around country restrictions for various things like watching hockey night in Canada broadcasts