Sports Then and Now

When it looked like Buffalo was struggling against a team with one win, they pulled through and found a way to earn the two points. The Sabres have been doing this all season long. Buffalo has found ways to win when they are not at the top of their game.

The Sabres were not on their game Friday night against Toronto, but goaltender Ryan Miller was. Buffalo was outshot 35-28 and Miller was the main reason the Sabres were even in the game. “That’s who [Ryan Miller] is. He’s a battler and the backbone of our team,” Buffalo captain Craig Rivet said about Miller.

“We played against a feisty team that wanted a win, and he stood on his head a couple times to help us out. He was the main reason we got the win.”

He stopped 33 shots, and with the help of the goal post and some luck, the Sabres stole two points from Toronto.

Miller improved to 8-0-1 on the season as he leads the league in goals against average (.944) and save percentage (1.65).

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Clarke MacArthur helped the Sabres remain undefeated on the road.

Buffalo improved to 4-0 on the road with Wednesday’s win in New Jersey as the Devils fell to 6-4 on the season with the loss.

It was Clarke MacArthur who put Buffalo on the board.

MacArthur scored 81 seconds into the game for his 5th goal of the season.

Welcome to Buffalo, Tim Kennedy!
Rookie Tim Kennedy scored his first NHL goal six minutes into the game. He came out from behind the net, spun around, and shot it past Martin Brodeur to give Buffalo a 2-0 lead. It was a goal Kennedy will never forget.

New Jersey got themselves back into the game when Andy Greene scored a powerplay goal, his first of the season. That was all the Devils would get though. Buffalo did not give New Jersey any chance of a comeback. It was a solid game all around from Buffalo and it paid off in the end as they earned the two points.

Midway through the third, Paul Gaustad scored his 2nd goal of the season, putting his team up 3-1 with ten minutes to play.

Jason Pominville put the game away with a power play goal with less than three minutes to go in the 3rd.

Buffalo now has 15 out of a possible 18 points this season.

Defenseman Tyler Myers has one more game before Buffalo has to keep him up. General Manager Darcy Regier needs to make a decision before Myers plays 10 games. It would not be a surprise to see him stick around in Buffalo for awhile.

New Jersey falls to 1-4 at home, while remaining a perfect 5-0 on the road.

Former Buffalo Sabre Andrew Peters signed with the Devils, but did not play in Wednesday’s matchup.

Ryan Miller improved his record to 7-0-1 on the season.

Buffalo has held opponents to only 17 goals this season, best in the NHL.

Bufalo will return home Friday night to host the Maple Leafs.

Jacques Plante wore a mask for the first time on November 1, 1959.

Ken Dryden in his book THE GAME spent a chapter explaining why goalies were not regular hockey players. They dressed differently, they played differently, they were different. While the rest of a goaltenders teammates are skating around passing and shooting a puck, stick handling, moving, the goalie sits and waits. He does nothing but wait to be assaulted from all angles with a vulcanized rubber puck shot at him at over a hundred miles an hour.

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The hockey world was shacken when the Edomonton Oilers traded the Great One to Los Angeles.

The contributors to ESPN the Reporters were doing their weekly thrash of the latest Brett Favre story. This time of course they were dealing with Brett Favre as a Minnesota Viking playing his old team the Green Bay Packers. There had been that sabbatical in New York but now Favre was playing for Green Bay’s hated division rival the Vikings. There was a burst of hyperbolic certitude that coverage of the NFL tends to engender. Such certainty is perhaps better left to religious services and modern political discourse.

Various reporters on the show opined that never before in the history of professional sports had their ever been a situation where a player who was the face, heart and soul of one organization had moved on to play for their hated rivals. Certainly such an occurrence had never resulted in significant games between the two rivals where the old champion of one team could come in and defeat his old team. These two regular season games between Minnesota and Green Bay were unique and significant it was said. Favre could actually be the difference. Green Bay without Favre might lose to Minnesota with Favre. The entire balance of power in the NFC North had quite possibly been shifted. This had never, they insisted, happened before…..

Now I know these guys don’t know hockey, don’t follow hockey and don’t care about hockey. Still, the trade of Wayne Gretzky by the Edmonton Oilers was one of the biggest transactions in sport in its time. These guys are certainly old enough to remember the trade. Some of them had covered hockey in some small way during their careers. Yet they couldn’t come up with a parallel for what was going on with Favre. Perhaps since ESPN doesn’t cover hockey their reporters aren’t allowed to remember hockey?   Read the rest of this entry →

Edgerrin James is within 18 yards of moving into the top 10 in NFL rushing history.

This week we are looking at some statistics and looking at their worth in determining all time greatness.

Reaching the Edge
I saw an interesting note this week that Seattle Seahawks running back Edgerrin James is 18 yards away from passing Marcus Allen for 10th place on the NFL’s all-time rushing list. He is less than 100 yards away from passing Marshall Faulk and Jim Brown to move into eighth place on the all-time list.

Now, James is a very good player and will probably one day earn a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but he is no Marcus Allen or Marshall Faulk and definitely not on the same level as Jim Brown.

His situation is just another example of how inaccurate statistics can be when used as a tool for measuring all-time greatness.

I still believe that statistics have value, but now see them as a way to compare players of the same era rather than for looking across generations.

When Jim Brown passed Jim Perry to become the NFL’s all-time rushing leader and then became the first player in NFL history to eclipse the 10,000-yard mark, there was little question that he had achieved something very special.

Today, the 10,000-yard club includes 24 players with Clinton Portis likely to become the 25th member later this season. Read the rest of this entry →

Hockey is back! Rejoice!

The new NHL season has opened up and it has started up with a bang. The NHL regular season is a marathon followed by the playoffs. The playoffs are a marathon run at high tempo while somebody beats you with a stick. Alexander Ovechkin however only knows how to sprint. He’s exploded to start the season with three points in each of his first three games.

That’s a Gretzky/Lafleur start to a season that hasn’t been seen in the NHL for 20 years.

Philadelphia and Washington played an important game in October, honest!! They played a great, exciting, back and forth game that Philadelphia won 6-5 in overtime. There were five lead changes in a 6-5 game as in Philly, Washington, Philly, Washington Philly. Besides Ovechkins third three point night and Semin’s highlight reel goal there was a hat trick for Philadelphia’s Mike Richards. Daniel Briere got the overtime winner. Is it time for the playoffs yet?

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