"Just shoot the puck!"
By Rick Anderson
February 22, 2000
The fans were screaming "shoot the puck." Even Lindy Ruff admitted that he was about to join in.
But Geoff Sanderson wanted to make sure he got off the shot he wanted. With the Sabres on the power play, the "Sandman" dickered around with the puck for nearly 10 seconds before he let go of a wrist shot that turned out to be the winner in the Sabres come-from-behind 3-2 win over the New Jersey Devils on Monday night.
They don't have to say that to me," Sanderson talked about the fans, "because I don't look to overpass it too much. Honestly, I couldn't hear it. I know they're yelling "Shoot.' I just caught him right through his legs."
With around 4 minutes left in regulation and the score tied at 2, the Sabres had the man advantage and Sanderson was quarterbacking the play in the upper portion of the right faceoff circle. It seemed as if Sanderson was content in using up the remaining time left in the penalty as the fans screamed at the top of their lungs to Sanderson to shoot. Finally, Sanderson let ‘er rip and the puck somehow got through and ended up in the back of the net with 3:59 remaining in the game.
"In that situation, you want to work up and down the wall and get their guys moving," Sanderson said.. "(Scott) Stevens happened to take one or two steps back, and I got the screen shot through him."
Sanderson's tactics were just as maddening to Devils' goalie Chris Terreri, who was giving Martin Brodeur a night off.
"He kept going back and forth with it,"said Terreri. "I lost it for a second. That's one I'd like to have back. It hit just the right spot."
Terreri was assessed a tripping penalty when Sanderson went down to give the Sabres the man advantage to set up Sanderson's 11th of the year and fourth goal in six games.
"I didn't come within six feet of him," Terreri said. "That's the way the game goes."
"He never touched the guy," fumed Devils coach Robbie Ftorek. "He just dove, but it's too bad. There's nothing you can do about it."
Before that, the Devils had gotten away with about three or four infractions that should have been called, especially when Maxim Afinogenov was hauled down right before the Devils' second goal.
The game against the Devils was crucial as far as the Sabres playoffs hopes are concerned. They are slowly moving up in the standings and by winning, Buffalo finally finds itself in the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
Dominik Hasek remains unbeaten in the New Millennium. Since coming back from his 40 game hiatus, Hasek has reacquired the magic that has helped him win five Vezina Trophies and two Hart Trophies. He made 35 saves against the Devils and a majority of them were out-and-out spectacular. It was Hasek's 200th NHL victory. Whenever the Dominator is on the ice, the Sabres seem to feed off his intensity and confidence and play much more aggressively.
"He was a huge difference in the game," said Ruff about his All-Star goalie. "He was as huge as it comes. For a while there, we were playing run-and-gun. We didn't have any gun. We were just running."
"You could see that Dom was getting into their heads," said Sanderson. "They had a lot of great chances, and you could see their forwards getting frustrated. When Dom's doing that, our team just builds off that."
The Devils score first in this contest and looked like they were going to play the kind of game they did the last time they visited Marine Midland Arena when they burned Buffalo 6-3.
Scott Gomez got the Devils on the board at the 4:13 mark of the second period when he poked in a rebound of Patrik Elias' original shot that Hasek had blocked. Gomez now has 16 goals and is one of the leading candidate contenders for NHL rookie of the year.
Near the end of the second period, Hasek made an exceptional save and the puck went right to Maxim Afinogenov, who dashed down the ice on the right side. He outmuscled Gomez and stickhandled the puck with one hand as he got past Gomez and put a shot on Terreri. The Devils' netminder made the initial stop, but Dixon Ward pounced on the loose puck and flipped it into the open corner for his 200th NHL point with only 19 seconds left in the period.
"From a defenseman's standpoint, it can be tough trying to keep up with a player with his kind of speed," Jay McKee said about Maxim's blazing speed that even rookie standout Gomez had a hard time with.
Mike Peca agreed by saying, "Keeping up with speed is always frustrating."
At 10:52 of the third, Brian Rafalski scored after Afinogenov was hauled down by Brendan Morrison to tie it. The refs had allowed several transgressions by the Devils go unchecked before Morrison's most flagrant infraction. Sabres' coach Lindy Ruff concedes that Maxim may have had that coming as he had just gotten away with an aggression.
"If you watched carefully," Ruff said, "you would have seen Max elbow the guy in the head, so it was a wash."
Then with a little over four minutes to go, Sanderson drew the penalty on Terreri and scored the winning goal. He did have a little help from Dixon Ward, who was buzzing around the New Jersey goalie causing havoc and screening the Devils netminder in the process.
"I got whacked around a few times, but so what," commented Ward. "That's what you have to do on the power play. If you want to score, you have to take a lot of crap in front of the net."
The Sabres held on with the Devils pulling their goalie in the last minute and even had a couple chances to score in the empty net. Ruff was extremely happy after the team's second solid performance in a row.
"This puts us back in the playoffs," Ruff said. "Any time you beat the team that's leading your conference, you're making a statement."
The Sabres are now ahead of the Rangers by a single point and play them on Friday night in another crucial game.
Even though the Devils lost, Ftorek gave his team credit for playing a hard-fought hockey game.
"We played well," Ftorek said. "We didn't play five periods of good hockey prior to this, but tonight we played three solid periods."
"It was a real big game for us," Ward said. "It was a character check. It was one more step."
"It's important to beat the teams that are over .500 just to make a statement," Ruff said. "I think we made a statement tonight. In a lot of senses, it keeps things going for us. It puts us right back into the playoffs."
"We have made some great strides in the last couple of weeks, so it was important to beat this team tonight," Ruff continued. "We can't afford to lose any games, really. The more we win right now, the more space we create with the little space we've got to create."
About Sanderson, Ruff said, "I think his whole game has improved. We're a team that relies heavily on our defensive play and I think for awhile he was a bind in the system and he's playing better at both ends of the ice. A lot of 40-goal scorers aren't 40-goal scorers anymore, it's just a product of the game. With Geoff, the way he's played lately, he's warranted more ice time and he's getting more pucks to the net and they are starting to go in for him.
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The Sabres had a valuable lesson taught to them during the game. The old adage of "when you just shoot the puck good things may happen" was underlined, highlighted and displayed before their very eyes in BIG BOLD LETTERS. Too often this season, the Sabres have wasted valuable power play time trying to make that pretty play, that perfect shot. A great number of goals scored in the National Hockey League are what one can consider "garbage goals" which often occur from just putting a shot on net. Sanderson and Miroslav Satan were happy recipients of goals that were direct results of taking a shot on net instead of making that fancy play.
Hasek makes backwards sprawling save
Satan scored his 29th of the season during another power play 9:38 into the third period when he took a long shot from the point and it got through Terreri's legs to give Buffalo a 2-1 lead. Vaclav Varada and Michael Peca got the assists on the goal.
Chris Terreri stops Maxim Afinogenov after the Sabres' rookie broke in alone. Dixon Ward zeros in on the rebound which he scores on
[Photo by Mark Mulville/Buffalo News]
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