00:00I just thought we, you know, there's, you know, there's a lot of old hockey-isms.
00:06But I felt like last night, one that I would pay some respect,
00:10is that your power play actually sucked the life out of the game for you.
00:15I thought the Sabres were buzzing to start the game,
00:17and then that power play just was such a thud.
00:19Minute and a half, maybe?
00:20Yeah, and there's like a, did they give up a shorthanded breakaway during it?
00:25I don't even, like, right.
00:26That happens often enough that I can't be sure that it definitely happened in that circumstance.
00:31But anyway, I just thought it sort of just, ugh.
00:36And, you know, not like Boston started killing them, but I just thought it was Boston's game.
00:40I wasn't there until the first goal.
00:43I hated the first goal.
00:45I mean, the second goal made you perhaps just sort of forget about the first goal.
00:50I felt sick.
00:50But, like, the first goal was, oh, no.
00:53Now I'm in trouble.
00:54Now I'm back to Sunday where I'm halfway through the game and losing and need to pull it out.
01:00And then I started to think, if it's not, I mean, this is funny, 82 games, right?
01:05And 60 of them were amazing.
01:08By the start of the third period, I went, if it's not going to be Thompson, who's it going to
01:12be?
01:13Because Thompson, almost by himself, pulled them out of Sunday's hole.
01:21And, all right, well, who's going to do that for me here?
01:24Like, where is anybody coming close?
01:26Kind of.
01:27Mm-hmm.
01:28So.
01:29And I don't have the benefit of waiting, waiting, right?
01:33Getting the power play.
01:34You're not, as a fan, you're not hoping, well, you know, if I just get a power play goal here,
01:39you know, I'm going to get a chance.
01:40I'm down, as it turns out, going into the third period, they were, well, 4-0, 14 seconds into the
01:45period.
01:46So, you were really in it.
01:48But even at 1-0, 2-0, you know, before the end of the second period, and then eventually 3,
01:54it's like, I don't have that to stand on.
01:58And so, where am I going to get my offense?
02:01Plus, Boston gets a power play goal that looked really easy.
02:03Yeah, and they just did not, they just didn't generate a lot of dangerous, outside of the first eight minutes.
02:09I thought the first bit of the game, they looked great, and then I just thought it was Boston's night.
02:15So, you know, it's a lot of words to just say it's hard.
02:19It's going to be hard.
02:20So, now they're going to go win a game in Boston, which shouldn't be impossible.
02:24It's going to be hard is not a story.
02:28It's going to be fine was, you know, more of a story.
02:32And that's not a given that they're going to be all right.
02:36If they don't get the power play right, it'll be really tough.
02:40Because that's what the playoffs are so much about.
02:44And I'm not optimistic, really, for that.
02:47I thought they could beat this team because, I mean, even going back to last year, five on five, the
02:54Sabres have been so good.
02:56And I wasn't worried about inexperience, and I still am not.
02:59I don't think that's going to be the thing.
03:02I don't think it was the thing last night.
03:04Coming off Sunday, why would you worry about that at all, like last night?
03:07But I guess this is new adversity.
03:10It's a loss.
03:12But I'm not expecting necessarily the power play to get good because, really, most of the year was annoying.
03:19It ranged from annoying to bad.
03:22We talked.
03:23Once the Sabres got pretty in the middle of the season, like, okay, let's really look at this.
03:29And in the beginning months of that, the story, I think, for me, listening to it, about the power play
03:36was, I mean, like, Paul, what's wrong with the power play?
03:39And he would say, well, they do score pretty much every game.
03:42Yeah, what I feel like we spent a lot of time on was, what's wrong with the power play?
03:51They've scored in six straight games.
03:53And I'm like, okay, well, I guess you win.
03:55Right.
03:56But it wasn't like it ever really looked great.
03:59Right.
03:59And then, by the end of the season, and now, of course, it became, well, it's really not good at
04:04all.
04:05I mean, not scoring every game, not scoring at all.
04:06Well, it's very hard for me to imagine, I think, them winning this series without getting a cut, especially in
04:16these games in Boston.
04:17They're not going to have, you know, for whatever it's worth, maybe it'll turn into a nothing burger.
04:22I don't know.
04:22But Boston has the choice of the matchups now, and I can't really tell yet who prefers to be with
04:31whom and what Lindy was trying to do at home here and what Sturm may try to do when he
04:37gets the last change.
04:39But that's another little piece you're losing now in these two games, and I just think it's going to be
04:44hard to win a road game in the playoffs without the power play, especially considering how stifled they look at
04:50five on five.
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