Grabo’s face (Photo: Patrick McDermott)
Those of you nursing a hangover on Sunday afternoon found yourself in good company as the Washington Capitals and Buffalo Sabres played a sleepy game in which not much happened. The Caps should have been able to dominate the worst team in the league, but that only kind of happened. Three Caps lines and four defenders seemed to be in control of this one, but the Sabres pwned the Caps depth enough to force overtime and win it in the gimmick. Take a whiff of some coffee grounds and follow me to the scoring summary.
Jason Chimera got on the board first as his centering pass went off a Sabres defenseman who was trying to stop Marcus Johansson’s net-crash. Tyler Ennis struck back for the Sabres with a rebound goal on the power play. The second period was uneventful aside from some penalties. Late in the third, Ryan Miller robbed Mikhail Grabovski and Karl Alzner’s go-ahead goal got undone by a tripping call. Buffalo owned overtime but couldn’t put the biscuit in the basket, so here comes the shootout recap. Yey.
Shootout recap bullets!
Sabres beat Caps 2-1 (SO).
Joe B suit of the night (thanks, @DakotaConduct!)
Kind of expected more from this one. The Sabres are the worst team in the league with virtually no offense and the worst possession numbers in the league. The Caps should have trounced them, and yet the Sabres pretty much outplayed the Caps– particularly when Washington’s bottom line was out. A few bad penalties didn’t help either, as Big Mo’ rarely favors the teams missing a dude on the ice.
Oh well. The Caps at least got a standings point, which is exactly what they need to do right now, since the schedule will get nasty soon. But they shouldn’t have waited until the 59th minute to really test Buffalo considering Ryan Miller was pretty much perfect in the shootout.
The Caps host the Sharks on Tuesday. Maybe we’ll have a trade by then? How about Erat for Yandle, straight up? Yes. That will definitely happen. Definitely.
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