DarthEbriate

Beautiful counterattack! Feisty Mitts leads to a Jost snipe.

Crap... I missed it answering the door for a package. Gotta rewind a bit... but why then immediately take an interference call, Stillman?

Boushh!

MORE GUMMI BEARS!

It is written in gold across the starfield: "Pursued by the pen-and-contract wielding agent, Goalie Levi races home aboard his starship, custodian of the sparkling glove that can save his people and restore the playoffs to the Sabres..."

I hope the Sabres win. Let the Return of the Tuch bring it all together for a nice 7-3 stretch with victories over WSH, NYI, and FLA.

Florida has the best path to 8th and have been playing solidly since February started. The Islanders have had stretches of malaise throughout the season and may be caught in one now on their California trip. The Sabres are the streakiest team and are hopefully coming out of one of their worst streaks of the season. It all comes down to the head-to-head matchups remaining. If the Sabres win on 3/25 and 4/4 it is going to get very, very entertaining.

ESPN and ABC/Disney+ whatever conglomerate used motion capture to turn tonight's Rangers-Capitals game into an animated TV show. Gary Bettman had a phone conversation with the cartoons, Kevin Weekes did play-by-play and appeared to be having fun with it. I made it through the first 5 minutes or so and I turned on the real game via ESPN+ a bit after the game started... they actually did a pretty good job with the players and how the puck moved around with their sticks and such and it was only about 30 seconds behind the real game. Occasionally you'd get a "BOOM!" on screen when someone threw a check or hit the boards. But it was bizarre.

I think this is silly and sort of fun, but I'm really glad it's happening to a Caps-Rangers game. If it were a Sabres game being replaced by this however, I'd be rather put out.

They'd have had to trade him to unblock Levi and Portillo?

Good game. Took awhile to get warmed up, which would've been a disaster without Anderson, but then from the midpoint on the Sabres outskated them and earned the victory.

Up by 2, late in the 3rd... give up a 2-on-0. That's reverse-thinking defense, right there. Thank you, Mr. Anderson.

You see, you can do it.

Nice. Now get the PP for that first bit of insurance.

Cozens -- I'll try spinning, deflecting, and then burying it. That's a good trick.

Dang. Close for TNT. And now the lead!

Phew. Thanks, Bryson.

Lovely pass by Tage.

Good period, that.

Quinn passed to a fallen JJP, but thankfully redeems himself. Just shoot, kids!

Nice to see Tuch and Greenway out on different PK pairs.

The Sabres are super-talented. It's the a matter of their players getting to NHL speed up and down the lineup, especially defensively. The passes are still a split second slow, the dump-ins and clears a bit too soft, the removal of time and space not as crisp as Toronto's. As an example, someday Krebs will make Kampf look sluggish, but Krebs isn't there yet.

Leafs still winning every footrace to a puck against any line not featuring Tuch.

As much as I want Levi to sign quickly, I don't want him to abandon his team to do it. The Frozen Four selection show is Sunday. I want him ready with pen to paper the instant Northeastern is not selected. However, it should be fairly easy to suss out whether they're an actual bubble team beforehand or not. Is ESPN going to list you on the bubble and ask for a camera feed to your team gathered in room? No? Then I want Levi signing immediately.

Good point. Down the stretch last season Bryson played several solid (and high-profile games like TOR and VGK) with Dahlin and Samuelsson as his partner. It likely looks quite a bit different if he's playing solely with Hagg or Pysyk or Butcher during the March-to-end stretch.