FanHouse Paul Gaustad

Newsmakers in the NHL is a weekday morning attempt to clear yesterday's rebounds and look to the day ahead.

Blue Jackets 4, Blackhawks 3: Banner night for the Columbus Blue Jackets, as their 4-3 shootout win over the Chicago Blackhawks clinched the first ever playoff berth in the in the eight-year existence of the franchise. It's been a long time coming, but congratulations Columbus, you're officially on the NHL map.

Newsmakers in the NHL is a weekday morning attempt to clear yesterday's rebounds and look to the day ahead.

Senators 3, Canadiens 2: First, the bad news for the Montreal Canadiens: they dropped a 3-2 decision, at home, to the Ottawa Senators on Monday night. Now, the really bad news for the Canadiens: remember those injuries to Andrei Markov and Mathieu Schneider? Yeah, they're worse than expected.

Sabres 5, Canadiens 1: Patrick Lalime faced 39 shots on Wednesday night and turned aside all but one in Buffalo's 5-1 thrashing of Montreal. Derek Roy and Paul Gausted each scored a pair of goals for the Sabres, as they raced out to a commanding 5-0 lead.

Lalime weathered the storm in the first period, turning aside 18 Montreal shots, until Roy started the party for Buffalo netting a power play goal at the 17:53 mark of the period.

Thanks to a pair of goals from Matt Ellis, the Buffalo Sabres ended Boston's 10-game winning streak with a 4-2 victory at TD Banknorth Garden on Saturday afternoon. The loss not only snaps Boston's 10-game winning streak, it also ended a 14-game home winning streak, while also giving the Bruins their sixth regulation loss of the season.

Ellis opened the scoring for the Sabres just three minutes into regulation, while Thomas Vanek added his 26th goal of the season just two minutes later.

After Phil Kessel cut the deficit in half with his 24th goal of the season, Ellis added his second goal of the game early in the second period to score what proved to be the game-winner. Paul Gaustad added his fourth goal of the year for the Sabres, while Ryan Miller turned aside 29 shots in net.

The win for Buffalo, combined with Pittsburgh's loss to Florida, moved the Sabres into the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

This is going to be one of those posts that to any seasoned hockey fan will seem as obvious as this report will seem to any dog owner. Yes, Virginia, you're dog has a rich and complex emotional life, it's just that of your average three-year old. Well, by the same token, hitting wins hockey games. The more a team gets involved physically while still playing a disciplined overall game, the greater chance it has at winning any particular game, no matter what the disparity in record.

The knock in recent years on the Buffalo Sabres has been that they're soft. If you hit them, they will fold. And, for the most part, that sentiment has been correct. The departure of fundamentally chippy guys like Mike Grier and J.P. Dumont removed from their lineup veteran guys who knew (and more importantly) wanted to retaliate to any rough stuff. Grier and Dumont made their linemates play bigger and created space for them.

Beginning with the Tampa game last Saturday I started to see a change come over the Sabres. There were three fights in that game by guys not named Andrew Peters, that in itself was a rarity. Gaustad, Mair and (of all people) Jochen Hecht got into scraps that ended with decisive punches being thrown by the guys in the blue and gold. While they were substantially out-hit in that game 25-12, it was after the Hecht fight that they woke up and forechecked harder, trading goals and scoring the game winner in the 3rd period, which the dominated technically and territorially until a late surge by Tampa to tie the game fell short.

In Pittsburgh, even though the game did not have a single fight the Sabres out-hit the Penguins 32-20, normally three or four games worth of hits in one pretty hard-fought game. As a group the Sabres are a relatively calm, quiet bunch. Guys like Hecht, Lydman, Kotalik, and Pominville are all tough competitors but they are hard to rouse to expressing their anger in the form of board-rattling hits. The difference between playing solid, mistake-free, by-the-system hockey and winning hockey is the difference between taking that one extra step to finish your check and skate hard back into the play.

There was a time when Dallas Stars goalie Marty Turco was among the best in the National Hockey League. It appears as if those days are over, at least for this year, as the 33-year old netminder was lifted for the third time this season, after giving up five goals on just 19 shots Friday night. In the end, the Stars fell to the runaway locomotive that is the San Jose Sharks, 6-2.

Honestly, San Jose may never lose again, as it now has a league-best 39 points.

Turco's save percentage is just about ready to drop below the .870 mark, which is pretty hard to comprehend for an NHL goalie, and Stars head coach Dave Tippett sort of agrees, saying "our goaltender has to be better." Indeed he does. And while he wouldn't announce anything after the game, Tippett left open the possibility that Tobias Stephan could start Sunday's game against Edmonton. I guess the question is: could he really be any worse?

San Jose received a pair of goals from Dan Boyle, while Joe Pavelski, Milan Michalek and Rob Blake slipped shots behind the struggling Turco before he was lifted following the second period.

Evgeni Nabokov, making his second start since returning to the lineup, turned aside 25 of 27 shots in the win.

It's a good question, honestly, as the Sabres prepare for their 3rd game of the season with 23 year-old Clarke MacArthur (CMac or the LIl' General to the faithful) filling in for "Broken" Jochen Hecht after Hecht underwent surgery today to repair a broken finger. This now marks the 3rd pivot that the Sabres have on the injured list to start this young season. Perennial question-mark Tim Connolly is out indefinitely with a fractured vertebrae while Paul Gaustad tore a ligament in his thumb beating up Marc-Andre Bergeron in the pre-season, which required surgery to repair and three to four weeks to heal. I'm not expecting Goose to return until the end of October.

MacArthur, a product of the WHL and on the bubble at the start of camp, will take over for Hecht between Jason Pominville and Daniel Paille on what is, nominally, Buffalo's 2nd line. CMac is a Left-Wing by trade and training but has been pressed into this centerman role in the past.

The part many have to be wondering about is why they didn't decide to bring up either Marek Zagrapan or Nathan Gerbe from Portland, as it would seem the obvious move. I have to think that with the game tomorrow night in New York and Friday's home at The Bank that there's no point since neither of them would see the ice against the 5-0-0 New York Rangers anyways. If the MacArthur experiment fails then Matt Ellis has more experience, if less skill, and neither Gerbe or Zags would help provide the disciplined positional/defensive game needed to play Top 6 minutes against the likes of Drury and/or Gomez.

The biggest issue is the loss of Hecht himself. He's such a smart and capable hockey player in all three zones of the ice that it's not possible to replace, espeically in the context of Connolly and Gaustad's absence. The challenges of the 82 game season start early for many teams. With two impressive wins to start the season it will be interesting to see how this unit handles this setback.

Ta,

Well, Sabres fans the questions about who will and who will not be in the lineup on opening night are pretty much answered. WGR550 has reported that the Buffalo Sabres sent eight players back to their AHL affiliate in Portalnd on Friday. They are as follows: Chris Butler, Nathan Gerbe, Tim Kennedy, Mark Mancari, Matheiu Darche, Dylan Hunter, Marek Zagrapan and Mike Funk. Mancari and Darche have both been effectively waived. Here's hoping Mancari doesn't pull a Pominville for someone else. Not likely, honestly.

With the injuries to Paul Gaustad and Tim Connolly this team is now officially short at center depth. It looks like recent waiver-bait Matt Ellis will be manning the third pivot until one of those guys is ready to play. I doubt Connolly's situation is serious at this point of one of Gerbe or Zagrapan would still be in Buffalo getting more experience for opening night. I'm sure there are a ton of people who would have liked to see Gerbe on the roster but, truthfully, the jump from college to the pros is a big leap and even a few months of living the grind of life in the 'A' is valuable preparation for the NHL. For the team it gives them time to sort out just who does and who does not what to be here come the deadline in February.

So, there will be just 2 scoring lines going out against the Wings on Sunday as a bottom 6 of MacArthur-Ellis-Kotalik / Peters-Mair-Kaleta is not going to scare any many goalies in this league. It also looks like they'll be keeping 8 defensemen as Mike Weber is still with the big club. I wouldn't be surprised if that changed by next Friday.

The Buffalo Sabres announced today that C/LW Paul Gaustad had surgery to repair a ligment in his right thumb. Goose prevailing wisdom was that he injured it when he jumped Marc-Andre Bergeron after Bergeron submarined Danny Paille bruising Paille's thigh in the process in Monday's exhibition game against Minnesota. That's apparently not the case according to Lindy Ruff.

"It's not something he could play through," head coach Lindy Ruff said. "It was something that came up...When we had the MRI yesterday, it was found he needed to have it operated on."

It was originally thought that Gaustad injured his thumb while taking on Marc-Andre Bergeron after the Minnesota forward laid a hit on Daniel Paille. But according to Ruff, it wasn't during the fight, but in the previous shift that Gaustad claims he hurt it.

Among the many issues surrounding the Sabres to start this season are their depth at center, on-ice leadership and toughness. Gaustad provides all of that and a whole lot more. This will be the first big test of this group in how they deal with him not being in the lineup. This is yet another example of why the NHL's pre-season schedule this year is monumemtally stupid. 20 days of camp with 7.4 games per team

Where's the training portion of training camp?

After nearly severing a tendon in his left ankle on Feb. 7th, Sabres center Paul "Goose" Gaustad has been cleared to play and most probably return to the lineup on Friday for Game 5. Nominally the Sabres 4th line pivot, he's a big man who plays a big game and even if he's only capable of playing 7-9 minutes, they should be 7-9 hard,committed minutes.

The Sabres, mentally, are a team that needs to feel pressure from behind to produce their best effort. It's a flaw, certainly, and one that is leaving them with no choice but to win on Friday if they have any hope of advancing to the Conference Finals. Last year's team played with a chip on their shoulders that was so big it nearly propelled them to the Cup finals. This year, having arrived, that same fire just is not there, having been replaced with expectations and a little too much swagger. If anyone has that chip right now it's the New York Rangers, which they remind us of every chance they get. This series is reminding me of the Buffalo/Ottawa series from last year with the roles reversed, so Sabres' fans are rightly nervous.

Gaustad, by constrast, is one of those truly self-motivated players, who has to play every shift like it's his last because it may just well be. The WHL graduate was told at every level of minor league hockey that he wasn't good enough to make the show in the NHL. Whatever the reason: not fast enough, not a good enough skater, terrible hands; the fact that Gaustad even takes a regular shift in the NHL is a testament to how hard he's worked to get here. In reality, he's an important cog in the Sabres engine, a forechecking machine who pounds defensemen into mistakes and plays a hard, controlled game eerily reminiscent of the dearly-departed Mike Grier.

So, his return to the lineup should not be considered a footnote to the storyline of Game 5. It might just well be the story itself. He represents everything that the Sabres have been missing since these playoffs began. The old bromide about playoff hockey is that it's your role players, your grinders, who win you the Cup. In this case, if there ever was a guy that could fill that role it's Goose.

Ta,

p.s. Max Afinogenov will be back in the lineup as well.