Lightning strike twice over Sabres
The Tampa Bay Lightning and Buffalo Sabres met Tuesday night for the second time in four days, but this time the game was played at the First Niagra Center in Buffalo, NY.
When the teams met on Saturday night, the Bolts secured a three to nothing win after a very slow start to the season. It was yet another full house in Buffalo for what was hopefully going to be a thrilling game of hockey.
If any fans were late to their seats they were going to be very disappointed after the very impressive Tomas Vanek opened the scoring with just two minutes gone, by slotting a backhand shot past Mathieu Garron in the Lightning net after steeling the puck from a Tampa defender on the blue line. Just 30 seconds later brought the home side’s second of the night as some aggressive fore checking from Cody McCormick enabled him to gain possession of the puck and center it to 29 year old Brad Boyes for his first goal of the year.
As the free flowing game went on, the Sabres continued to apply a lot of pressure and created several very good chances. The Bolts first line were the only ones looking capable of scoring on the Tampa Bay roster to get themselves back into the game, with Stamkos and St.Louis both creating good chances in the first ten minutes. Tampa then had a great chance to cut the lead in half on a powerplay but didn’t get one shot on Ryan Miller in the Sabres goal.
Some more aggressive fore checking but this time by the Lightning got them their first goal of the night as veteran Martin St.Louis battled hard to center a pass to Vincent Lecavalier who had two bites at the cherry before scoring and getting his 800th NHL point of his very impressive career.
Having being completely dominated for the first three quarters of the game, the Bolts somehow went in to the locker rooms all square at two a piece as their second goal was very similar to their first but this time it was Nate Thompson who shot one off Christian Ehrhoff’s skate and past Miller for his second of the year. The fast and physical period came to a close all squared at two, however Buffalo should have definitely been in the lead with the shots 15-10 in their favour.
Buffalo started the second just as they did the first and a massive hit on Vincent Lecavalier by Brazilian born Robyn Regehr set the tone early. The Sabres continued to apply pressure to Tampa but it was the Bolts who scored the first goal of the second to remarkably take a three to two goal lead. With just under five minutes gone, American Matt Gilroy fired a slap shot towards Ryan Miller, which was deflected by Steven Stamkos and somehow got through under Millers legs to give the Bolts their third unanswered goal.
Buffalo had two powerplay opportunities throughout the even period and created several chances on both but couldn’t get the puck in the net on either. The latter half of the second period was end-to-end hockey with the Bolts offense starting to gain some rhythm and consistently create chances. Late in the period, the superb Austrian Vanek had a breakaway chance but was stopped by the equally impressive Canadian Garron in between the pipes. That brought the end to a much closer period with Buffalo edging the shots by one but also trailing by one.
The final period was one of the more one-sided periods of hockey that you will see this year in favour of the Sabres, who racked up a massive 17 shots in the period alone. The packed First Niagra Center was buzzing and a cracking atmosphere helped the Buffalo team play some great hockey going forward. The Sabres couldn’t get the puck past Garron though as he was forced to make a triple save at one point to keep the Bolts lead.
With the game tensely poised at three to two in favour of the Bolts, the puck was cleared from a Sabres attack and fell into the path of Ryan Malone on a breakaway, who deked past Miller and slotted it home with just over a minute to play to give Tampa Bay some breathing room. The Sabres managed to create a tense final 40 seconds as Nathan Gerbe released a cannon which beat Garron low down to his left. Tampa managed to hold out until the end and somehow grabbed the two points despite being out played, hustled and shot throughout the 60 minutes.
The Bolts will want this great result to kick start their year and give them momentum as they travel to Tennessee to take on the Predators on Thursday night. The Sabres have got off to a fairly decent start despite the two losses to Tampa and they welcome the struggling Blue Jackets to Buffalo tonight.
