Buffalo Rising Online

League leaders in scoring? Check. League leader in goals scored? Check. Entertaining and offensive minded match up? Double-check. The Buffalo Sabres played with fire for most of the game and came out unscathed, topping the Pittsburgh Penguins at their own game 4-3 Monday night.

Normally, I'd be all over the Sabres for trying to match Pittsburgh's game, but they didn't really give themselves much of a choice by going down 2 goals in the second period. Buffalo grabbed the lead and then shut down defensively with great success, keeping the Penguins from generating much of anything on offense until the dying minutes of the third period.

Pittsburgh opened the scoring 9 minutes and 37 seconds into the first period when Rulsan Fedotenko put in his first of the game. Penguins forward Peter Sykora passed the puck to Evgeni Malkin in the Buffalo zone. Malkin accepted the pass an…

When the Buffalo Sabres snapped their losing streak last week, they did it against the best the Eastern Conference had to offer. This week, they did it with the Eastern Conference's worst, topping the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-3 on Saturday night.

It wasn't a pretty win, but it was just what the doctor ordered. After losing “the season opener” Friday to the Panthers, the Sabres buried their heads and pushed hard for 2 points on Tampa's home turf. While they had trouble keeping the lead, they clamped down defensively in the third period and kept the 'Bolts from generating much of anything on offense. In fact, they didn't let Tampa get a shot on net for the first 13 minutes of the third period.

The game opening goal came about halfway through the first period when Tampa Bay defenseman Marik Malik turned the puck o…

Four games in 6 nights certainly marks a rough patch in a schedule, and the Buffalo Sabres showed what kind of toll it can take by losing to the Nashville Predators 2-0 on home ice.

To be fair, both teams played an uninspired game from start to finish, which makes sense when you consider that the Predators played 3 games in 5 nights. There were few exciting scoring chances on either side of the ice and the game's pace was both stilted and broken. It was likely due to the coaches changing their lines more frequently – it's a little harder for the players to get flow going when they're being taken off the ice so quickly.

One of Nashville's goals was a fluke. It was a hard shot that Miller would have stopped if it didn't take a strange bounce over him and into the net. One would expect the team to get a little fired up after a goal like that, especially on home ice, but it w…

The Sabres survived a costly turnover against the Penguins on Friday night, but were unable to weather another Saturday night against the Montreal Canadians in a 3-2 loss.

The first of the 3 goals Montreal scored was due to sloppy play by Buffalo. Unfortunately, it jump-started their engines for the rest of the game. The cause was a fumbled pass from Teppo Numminen to Pat Kaleta, just inside the Buffalo blue line. Andrei Kostitsyn picked up the errant puck and drove it past a sprawled Patrick Lalime, who hit the ice in response to a fanned shot. Kostitsyn was able to regain control and pop it over Lalime into the net, despite the Buffalo netminder almost making the save.

This wasn't lost on Lindy Ruff, who recognized that goal as the turning point in the game. “We had real good momentum going into the second period,” Ruff said. “We came off the power play where we…

The Sabres skated way with 2 points Friday night after defeating the red-hot Pittsburgh Penguins, despite playing Lindy Ruff's system for only one period. Luckily, it was the period that counted the most.

Things were wide open for the first 2 periods, looking more like a game from the Briere and Drury era than one of the defense-first contests the coaching staff has been trying to get going this season. Shockingly, the score stayed relatively low, despite the presence of the league's leading scorer, Evgeni Malkin, and his partner-in-crime, Sidney Crosby. To be fair, they both had a productive night. Both of Crosby's goals were assisted by Malkin. It's just that the rest of their usually high-powered team couldn't seem to get it going.

It was obvious that the Sabres were starting to fall behind in the speed department toward the end of the second period. They took three pen…

You could almost hear the collective Bruins nation, sarcastically chanting before the game. “One, two, three, four, five... we want six!” The Sabres responded: “Not tonight.”

The Buffalo Sabres defeated the Eastern Conference leading Boston Bruins Thursday night in an ugly 3-2 victory to put an end to their 5-game losing streak. The Sabres' play was rife with desperation and hard work, but they also showcased a few areas they need to tighten up as well.

One of the biggest reasons Buffalo came away with the win was physical play. They didn't exactly dominate Boston in terms of hits, registering 32 to Boston's 27, but they did manage to match the B's intensity for a full 60 minutes. Instead of keeping to an imaginary perimeter around the opposing goaltender, the Sabres crashed the net with reckless abandon. They even took a penalty for Goaltender Interference when K…