October 9, 2007
Sabres blueline troubles exposed
By Dave Davis, TheFourthPeriod.com
(BUFFALO, NY)
-- Did the departure of two good hockey players really
make the Buffalo Sabres that much worse? After
watching the Islanders sweep Buffalo this past
weekend, folks are starting to wonder.
It's only two games, but that's more than enough for
some fans to hit the panic button and start throwing
the blame around.
The co-captains are gone. The defense is lousy. Ryan
Miller is a bit off. It's the coaching (sorry-when
writing about fan opinions it's obligatory that we
always include that one). A prominent local scribe
even suggested that the players weren't trying hard
enough.
Let's stop all of this silliness right now. If you
look closely you'll get a clear picture of the main
reason for the struggles of this club not only this
past weekend but also going back to the 2007 playoffs.
Henrik Tallinder and Toni Lydman were completely
dominated by the Islanders top line of Bill Guerin,
Mike Comrie, and Ruslan Fedotenko, who combined for a
whopping 16 points in two games.
Watching the success of the Isles' new gunners brought
back some disturbing memories of the Ottawa Senators
big line freewheeling and causing havoc in the Buffalo
zone during the 2007 Conference Finals.
Go ahead and blame the effort, the departure of the
co-captains, or even the goaltending, but the big
story here should be the realization about this team
that appears to be coming to the forefront this year -
the Sabres arguably do not have a true shutdown
defensive pairing.
For some time now we've been running with the notion
that Tallinder and Lydman are true shutdown defensemen
and a formidable 1-2 combination. But in reality, that
was only true for a period of time about two years
ago.
Were their struggles this weekend just an aberration,
or the continuation of a trend? Last season seems to
indicate the latter.
In 2006-07 they were unable to produce better
individual plus/minus ratings than either of the
team's most maligned defensemen - Jaroslav Spacek and
Dmitri Kalinin.
For all of the complaints about the Buffalo powerplay,
their penalty killing was worse at 20th in the league
- and it wasn't because of Chris Drury.
Of the 16 playoff teams last season, the Sabres were a
lowly 13th in fewest regular season goals against.
In the 2007 playoffs, Tallinder and Lydman were the
only Sabres defensemen who were minus players.
As a disclaimer, it must be noted that Tallinder was
injured for much of last season and missed 25 games.
But that fact notwithstanding, instead of everyone
complaining about how underrated he is, we should be
asking when and if he will ever return to his form of
2005-06, when he and Lydman were so good that Peter
Forsberg alluded to playing against them as being
similar to trying to skate through quicksand.
The Sabres don't quite have the offensive firepower
and depth this season to mask their defensive
deficiencies. If things on the blueline don't change
soon, they'll be the ones who'll be sinking.
Dave Davis is the
Buffalo Correspondent for The Fourth Period Magazine and covers the
Sabres for TheFourthPeriod.com.
