Ryan Miller Leads Sabres Over Coyotes as Buffalo Blanks Phoenix 2-0

The Buffalo Sabres played an almost perfect road game Saturday night, frustrating the Phoenix Coyotes with stout defense and taking advantage of their own scoring chances to record a 2-0 shutout win.

The game was almost a complete reversal of their loss in Calgary in their previous game.  Three nights before, the Sabres gave up a multitude of odd-man rushes and Ryan Miller let in two head-shakingly bad goals.  

Tonight in Phoenix, the Sabre forwards played a much tighter defensive game.  There always seemed to be a white jersey in the proper position to intercept a pass or cover a rushing Coyote.

Ryan Miller played possibly his most solid game of the season.  He was always in position, always in balance, anticipating the play, but not reacting too soon.  He earned his fourth shutout of the season in stopping 28 shots.  In comparison, Miller notched only three shutouts in the entire season last year.

The first period was fairly evenly contested.  Although Phoenix outshot the Sabres 15-6, Buffalo had some good scoring chances and just failed to convert.  Phoenix had the best opportunity of the period however.  

On a Buffalo power play, Ales Kotalik tried to keep the puck in the Phoenix zone, but it was chipped by him, leading to a two-on-one Coyote rush.  After a give and go, the Coyote's Joakim Lindstrom labeled a one-timer at the right corner, but Miller had read the play and slid back to his left, making an incredible save with his pad and glove.

The Sabres turned it on in the second period, dominating play and outshooting the home team 10-3.  Four minutes in, Craig Rivet fired a shot from the point on net.  In the ensuing scrum, Vanek slid the puck under Phoenix goalie Ilya Bryzgalov where it lay tantalizingly a few inches short of the goal line until Tim Connolly beat the Coyote D-man to the puck and shoved it into the net for his seventh goal in the last six games.

A few minutes later, Derek Roy, who seemed to create a chance nearly every shift, snared a loose puck in center ice and headed toward the Phoenix goal.  He faked outside, drew the puck back inside, and then shifted outside again.  

Ken Klee, the Phoenix defenseman, properly played Roy's body, but Roy's shifty dekes had drawn the attention of the other Coyote defenders.  As Klee put his shoulder into Roy, knocking him off balance, the Sabre center slid the puck cross ice to a streaking Daniel Paille who fired it into the open net for his first goal in 15 games.

With a 2-0 lead starting the third period, you would have expected the Sabres to tighten up defensively. Instead, they got a little sloppy and took three penalties in the first 10 minutes.  But their penalty kill, which currently ranks fourth in the NHL on the road, was up to the task and kept Phoenix off the board.

With 7:15 to go, Vanek had a chance to ice the game, leading a two-on-one rush with Drew Stafford.  The Austrian closed and fired, but his wrist shot missed the net.  While Vanek has points in his last six games and is still third in the league in scoring, earlier in the year he was burying those chances.

There was a moment of concern with just under four minutes left when Sabres Captain Craig Rivet fired the puck over the glass for a delay of game penalty.  But Phoenix's Captain Shane Doan returned the favor, tripping Toni Lydman less than a minute later to even things up.  The Sabres and Ryan Miller successfully killed off the rest of the game.

This was Buffalo's fifth consecutive road game and they are 3-2 in that span with one more game in Anaheim on Monday night before returning home.  This win guarantees they will have at least a .500 record on this, their toughest travel stretch of the season.  

Had they played poorly on this trip and fallen out of the top eight playoff spots, the pressure on them would have been intense.  Instead, they stand in seventh place and while they are still threatened by Carolina, Florida, and Pittsburgh, they have moved up to challenge Philadelphia and New York for the fifth and sixth spots.

Their biggest concern is injuries. Jaro Spacek and Joachen Hecht left the game tonight with undisclosed injuries and did not return. Spacek's loss would be especially troubling with Numminen, Sekera, and Talllinder already out.

It was nice to see some reinforcements return to the ice in the shape of Patrick Kaleta.  He wasn't on the ice for more than a minute before he was in a fight and took up right where he left off before he was injured by finishing his checks and generally annoying the opposing team.

Nathan Paetsch was also in a feisty mood, getting in one fight and taking another penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct together with the Coyotes' Daniel Carcillo for an incident that the linesmen would not allow to escalate into a fight.