Brennan Vogt
The Buffalo Sabres played fast and hard right out of the gate tonight. Tage Thompson took advantage of a long shift by Rantanen less than a minute into the game to get Buffalo on top early. It was a struggle from that point forward. As coach Bednar put it, “the team lacked intensity and energy tonight.” I noticed that about halfway through the first period myself. Here are my takeaways from the 4-2 loss against the Buffalo Sabres.
My Takeaways
- Failure to backcheck quickly led to the Tage Thompson goal less than a minute into the game.
- The Avalanche need to be more aggressive on the penalty kill to knock the puck out of the zone.
- In the first period the Avalanche were really lacking energy but started to get going late in the period.
- The Avalanche started to use the stretch pass with a little success tonight.
- The Avalanche really started to shut down the neutral zone in the second period allowing only two shots in eight minutes.
- The power play looked out of sorts, understandable with three players that came back to the lineup after missing time.
- EJ was playing one of his best games so far this season.
Evan Rodrigues Interview
Evan Rodrigues came back from a recent lower body injury and we all spoke with him after the game. I asked him, despite the loss, how it felt to get the monkey off of his back right away:
“Yeah, it’s always nice to score. Wish we could have got another one or you know, score a little bit sooner or try to get a little bit more momentum,” sounding disappointed in himself.
We asked what are some things that you and the team can take from this game:
“Yeah, I think we just got to be ready from puck drop. I don’t think we were today. They had five D and we didn’t take advantage of that. They were hitting up bodies and we didn’t wear them down,” giving us his breakdown.
Coach Bednar Interview
Coach Jared Bednar was not so happy when he sat down with the media, giving us one or two word answers to start. But he relaxed a little. Bednar gave us his thoughts on the amount of scoring chances the team had lately:
“Yeah, we had lots of looks. More looks tonight than we’ve had probably in the last two games combined. Our finishing obviously wasn’t good enough. Goalie was good. Gotta give him credit. You know, I don’t think we had enough traffic to the net on some of our early chances. Didn’t shoot the puck that well. And even when we did get traffic he was good,” telling us his thoughts on the other team.
We asked what may have been attributed to the slow start:
“Sleeping. Sleeping early. They get two in the first seven minutes. We didn’t manage the puck properly. Didn’t defend hard enough. Not enough intensity to our game. You see after the, I don’t know call it first 12 minutes of the game. We start to get things going, everything starts turning in our direction. We just couldn’t score,” commenting of the low energy to start.
The Avalanche will bounce back after tonight. They are starting to get some of the regulars back in the lineup and it will take them a little time to get adjusted to gameplay again. There is no need to worry, everything will be just fine.