The good news is that the Sabres pulled out another exhilarating win in overtime against the Edmonton Oilers last Thursday night. The victory gave the Sabres 82 points and the overall points lead in the NHL, one point ahead of the Nashville Predators.
The bad news is that the Sabres’ injury bug bit again, and bit hard. The Sabres lost electrifying winger Maxim Afinogenov to a broken wrist, and gritty centerman Niri Novotny to a sprained ankle.
With Jarosalv Spacek breaking his hand against Calgary and Paul Gaustad’s severed ankle tendon from the Ottawa game, it is the third game in a row in which the Sabres have had a crucial injury. Thursday night was two hits instead of one.
“It’s going to make things a lot tougher,” Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff said of the injuries. “We’re going to have to dig in, we’re going to ask a little bit more of some younger players.”
The struggling Oilers, who have scored a league low 55 goals on the road, could manage only one goal against Sabres goalie Ryan Miller. The goal, scored by centerman Shawn Horcoff, came 7:02 into the first period. Horcoff took a pass from his line mate, Ales Hemsky, and beat Miller with a quick wrist shot from right about the left face-off dot. “It hit Dmitri’s glove,” Miller said, “It was definitely going high glove, and ended up going off my side.”
The Sabres evened the score with 18:04 left in the second period when Afinogenov scored a goal gift-wrapped by Oilers goalie and former Sabre, Dwayne Roloson.
The play started with Afinogenov skating over the blueline and drop passing the puck to his line mate Thomas Vanek. Vanek took a hard wrist-shot that was stopped, but Roloson fumbled the rebound and Afinogenov swooped in to slap the puck into an empty net.
Afinogenov did all this with a broken wrist. “He fell on it. I think it actually happened the shift before he scored a goal,” Ruff said, “He went back out, and was trying to play with it. We had it X-rayed in between periods, and that’s what it turned out to be.”
Afinogenov’s break was of the scaphoid bone of his left wrist. According to WebMD, “A scaphoid fracture is a break in a small bone on the thumb side of your wrist. Of the eight carpal bones in your wrist, your scaphoid bone is the most likely one to break.”
“It appears right now that it’s not going to be a season ender,” said Sabres General Manager Darcy Regier. “ I think six [weeks] is probably the minimum.”
If Afinogenov requires the minimum healing time, he will be back with about a week left in the regular season. The one bright side is that he will still be able to skate and stay in shape while his wrist heals.
Novotny’s recovery, on the other hand, should be much shorter. His injury came with 7:04 remaining in the third period, when he tried to check an Oiler down low behind the goal line. It is being called a reinjury of the left high ankle sprain that caused Novotny to miss six games last month. Regier said, “The doctors feel that his situation won’t be as long as the last one, though it appears to be the same injury on the same ankle.”
Ruff refused to comment on which players would be called up from the Sabres’ American Hockey League (AHL), in Rochester, but the smart money should be placed on Drew Stafford and Clarke MacArthur. Stafford and MacArthur, both AHL All-Stars this year, who were watching the Sabres game together Thursday night.
“It’s happened in the past, last year too,” said Sabres defenseman Toni Lydman, speaking about injuries and call-ups. “It just means that the other guys need to step up and maybe play more minutes and maybe play a little bit different role than they normally would.”
Even the if the Sabres do lose a little steam because of injuries, they have built a six point lead in the Eastern Conference and 13 point lead in the Northeast division with 24 games to go.
In Thursday’s game, regulation ended in a one-one stalemate. The game showcased some stellar play by both goalies. Miller was great and Roloson was even better as the Sabres poured on the pressure for most of the last two periods. Even though Roloson allowed two goals to Miller’s one, he was awarded the third star of the game. Miller said, “Roly [Roloson] was really sharp, he made some really nice reads.”
Overtime ended quickly when Sabres centerman, Danny Briere scored the winner 62 seconds into the sudden death period.
The play started when Sabres winger, Jochen Hecht brought the puck up ice on a two-on-one break. He passed the puck to Briere who faked and then slammed on the brakes as Oilers center Toby Petersen dropped to block the shot and then slid right by. Briere then calmly roofed the puck “top shelf where mama hides the cookies” past a helpless Roloson.
Sabres play-by-play announcer Rick Jeanneret yelled over the crowd, “The cookie monster strikes again!”
