Roloson steals point from Rangers
By Rick Anderson
Sunday, December 5, 1999
Dwayne Roloson has been the Sabres forgotten man this season. Even when Dominik Hasek went down with his major injury, Roloson was the odd man out as the Sabres man in the crease. Martin Biron took over for Hasek and got the team back to .500 three times. But Biron has been struggling as of late and Lindy Ruff finally decided to put Rollie the Goalie in the nets against the New York Rangers last night. The result was a 1-1 tie, but Roloson kept the Sabres in the game and got the first star award, stopping 26 shots. He had to be especially sharp in the first two periods as the Rangers peppered him with 21 pucks.
The Sabres opened the scoring in the first period and it looked for awhile that was the only goal they needed to beat the Rangers. Maxim Afinogenov wasn't getting as much ice time as he liked, so he went out and did something about it by scoring his sixth goal of the season. Afinogenov was all over the ice in the first period, making precision passes, showing off his speed and stick handling abilities and scoring the first goal of the game. Geoff Sanderson picked off a pass by Kim Johnsson and flipped a pass over to Stu Barnes who was positioned at the bottom of the left faceoff circle. Barnes quickly made a perfect pass to Afinogenov who was right in front of Rangers' goalie Mike Richter. Mad Max slammed it home for an easy goal. Nothing came easy for the Sabres after that.
"I think they're a hard-working team, and they have some great, speedy forwards," said Richter. "We just tried to match their intensity."
Roloson, making his first start since Buffalo's 3-2 OT win over Tampa Bay on November 28, made 10 saves in the first period and was quite sharp in doing so. In the second period, Theo Fleury had a breakaway on Roloson which Fleury was stonewalled. After two periods of play, the Rangers were outshooting the Sabres 21-11.
"Theo and I used to joke around in Calgary for $100,000 breakaways," Roloson said after the game. "Theo could afford it, but I couldn't afford it then. He knows my weaknesses and I know where he likes to go. He tried to hold it as long as he could and I just got over there. I don't know if he hit me or the side of the net. I just tried to stay with him as long as I could."
Alexandre Daigle broke Roloson's shutout bid when he scored 2:18 into the third period with a shot from the top of the left faceoff circle. Daigle got a nice pass from Tim (the "Tool Time") Taylor and zinged his shot inside the post and into the net and the Sabres now had to work if they wanted the two points.
"I think we have to feel good about ourselves," said Daigle. "Buffalo talked in the paper about wanting to come out hard tonight, but that wasn't the case. We outplayed them, we outworked them."
Daigle has had a rough ride since being showcased in Ottawa as their future star. He went to Tampa Bay and failed there. The Rangers picked him up and he has been playing in Hartford in the AHL as of late.
"I'm very pleased with his game, but he has to understand that he has to continue to do this every night," said Rangers coach John Muckler about Daigle. "He has to be held on a short leash. This is his last opportunity to play in the NHL. Nobody questions his talent. You can question other things, but you can't question his talent."
"I've always tried to talk to my defensemen," Roloson said. "I like it when they talk to me. It makes it easier down there, especially when I'm not in there every day. When I talk to them, they know what's going on. They know when they're going to get hit, they know if they should reverse it. It makes it easier on them, it makes it easier on me."
The Sabres came on with their strongest effort in the third period as they outshot the Rangers 11-6. Then in the overtime, Buffalo had the only shots on net as they got 4 on Richter.
"We had a great game in goal from Roloson who in the first two periods made 9 or 10 saves that kept us in the hockey game," Ruff said. "We couldn't win the game in the third period, that's disappointing."
"We didn't start paying until the third," said Dixon Ward. "Rollie held us in there."
"We turned it up in the third period," said Ruff. "I think we gave them two chances or one chance in the third period and seven or eight ourselves. That's the way we have to play. That was just a little too late."
"We're just not coming up with strong performances for their money, for the entertainment, to see the team they know can put wins on the board," said Jason Woolley. "We're not bringing enough to the table."
"That was one disappointing point for us," Sanderson said. "That should have been a win. We just got away from shooting the puck and getting it in deep. They limped in here, and they're a team we should have taken advantage of."
Meanwhile, Muckler was pleased with his team's performance. He said, "From start to finish, it was probably our best game of the year, especially defensively. I think we had seven 2-on-1 breaks; I didn't see that many from our team all year. But you've got to bury those chances."
Richard Smehlik was benched last night after being a no-show all season. When asked if the benching of Smehlik was the result of his recent poor play, Ruff replied by reflecting about the last game against Philadelphia.
"The first goal we got caught in the opening shift (when Lindros scored the other night for the Flyers), he was the defenseman that got caught," Ruff said. If you play poorly, you can expect yourself to be out."
Smehlik may be joined by some other non-performers when the Sabres play up in Toronto Monday night.
Asked if he thought the Sabres were trying to be too cute with their plays, Ruff responded, "Yea, we were way too cute. Our team has a lot of trouble understanding that with the ice conditions and everything else, we can't play a pretty game. It doesn't work. The first goal we made a couple of nice passes. But halfway through a period when the ice starts to get chewed up, you've got one option: get over the blue line and if you don't have a play, instead of trying to throw a saucer pace cross ice and hope it lands on somebody's stick, let's get it on net, get somebody going to the net and try to score a couple ugly goals."
Curtis Brown chimed in, "Too many times we tried to make that cute play or that perfect play. I don't think there is a perfect play. It's getting to the net, getting bodies in there and going for the rebounds."
The Sabres who were feeling hopeful that they would get a winning streak going coming into this long home stretch, now are in complete disarray after getting only one point in a possible 8 in their last 4 home games.
"It was a disappointing point," said Ruff in his post game conference. "Turnovers by our defensemen in the first period led to a lot of odd number situations. Our forwards getting to the blue line and turning it over. You know that's a common factor with us a lot. When we play bad, we don't get it in. When we play good, we get it deep, we cycle, we create chances by having our defense involved. Their goal was a result of not getting it deep, trying to make that second and third play. Our high forward gets caught or our defenseman gets caught and they get an odd number situation going the other way."
"I thought in the third period finally we just got the puck to the net and we had someone go in," Ruff continued. "Even the one where Michael Peca shot from a long way out, the rebound was kicked way out, Patrick had a chance at it - and instead of making pretty plays we just started to get the puck to the net. You know we created enough opportunities but we really didn't play a decent period until the third."
Ruff must be at his wits' end trying to untangle the Sabres mess. He had the Sabres behind closed doors again after the game and all indications are that it wasn't pretty inside those walls. The excellent game that Roloson played had gone for naught and the Sabres could not beat a team 6 games under .500.
When asked when the message is going to get through, Ruff said, "I don't know. I would have thought it would have gotten through by now. This wasn't a big meeting (his closed door session with the team after the game), this was my postgame talk. I talk to them every game. I just let them know how disappointed I was. Some nights you lose for various reasons, we've lost because of penalties. Tonight we lost because we turned the puck over, we didn't want to make the easy plays and it hurt us until we started to get the puck deep."
Lindy was so disappointed that he called the tie a loss. In most fans' view, he was right.
What can a coach do? He has shaken up his lines, benched players, has had too many to count closed door meetings, jumped up and down while ranting and raving. This all in his futile effort to get his message across. Nothing seems to be working. At this point it appears as if he must go outside to get the help he needs, either via trade or call-ups from Rochester.
"Monday we've got to regroup. It's almost like the start of the season. We've got seven or eight guys who are playing OK - OK isn't good enough for our team. We need more. We need more desperation, we need more passion."
Peca isn't the only player who is AWOL on this team. Vaclav Varada has had bouts of disintegrating in the past. Wayne Primeau has had games of being absent only to reappear the next game. Smehlik has been on a different planet since the playoffs and no one knows his whereabouts. The Sabres' list of player AWOLs goes on and on and encompasses the entire team, from top to bottom. John Rigas has disappeared since promising to "supply the tools to get the job done" last June. Darcy Regier has not disappeared - he's always been an invisible GM who only materialized during the trade deadline last March.
Ruff and his coaching staff have been extremely visible in public. But Ruff's words seem to be disappearing in the locker room and not penetrating the ears of his players.
The entire Sabres organization better materialize and perform like they did in last season's playoffs or they will disappear from playoff contention very soon.
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"I'm happy with my performance, but it's frustrating we only got a tie," said Roloson. "We've been struggling lately and it would have been nice to get another point out of it."
Dwayne Roloson was spectacular in goal while preserving 1-1 tie
Roloson meanwhile seemed to be extremely comfortable on the ice and was talking up a storm to his defensemen all night to be sure they were in their proper places.
Alexei Zhitnik and Rangers' Theo Fleury dig in for puck
When a Sabres fan takes a look at how this team was playing exactly a year ago and the one attempting to play hockey now, several things smack us clearly over the head. There is glaring absenteeism in the 1999-2000 version of the Buffalo Sabres. The first one is so obvious that it won't be mentioned here. The next conspicuous hole in the Sabres game is the disappearance of Michael Peca. Has his body been taken over by a 120-pound weakling? He definitely is not the same player who's claim to fame are his devastating open-ice hits. The entity who now posses the body of Michael Peca is clearly not the same one who scored 27 goals last year and was such an on-ice leader that he was even mentioned as possible MVP last year. As for Peca deserving to keep that "C" on his sweater, that's a whole different article to be discussed in full some other time.
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