02/01/12 - 08/01/12

Toronto Maple Leafs 2 - 2 Buffalo Sabres
Buffalo Sabres 2 - 0 Toronto Maple Leafs

It's not particularly surprising that both of these games between the Northeast Division rivals sold out their respective home arenas, nor that the first of them, at least, was filled with penalties. Since the Maple Leafs were significantly better in the Air Canada Centre than on the road, the expectations were that Toronto should at least be able to take two points away from the home-and-home, but the Maple Leaf-dominated eighteen thousand-strong crowd was stunned by the barrage of Sabre shots; for one of the few times so far this year, Buffalo outshot their opponent, 35-25, making Marek Schwarz's first-star rated performance all the more impressive. Robert Nilsson and Mike Ryder were the two to get past him, Nilsson in the first period and Ryder in the third, while Adam Mair and Kris Chucko had the Maple Leaf goals.

Where the first game was mostly offensive in nature, the return fixture at the HSBC Arena was far more defensive. Martin Havlat had 14 penalty minutes, the result of two minors and a misconduct call that saw him dismissed from the game, which some are seeing as the death knell for his time in Buffalo, but as usual, it was Ryan Miller's heroics that drew the most praise as he kept Toronto out through all of their 17 shots for his second shutout of the season. While the win wasn't exactly dominant, goals from Marian Hossa and Martin Legault were good enough for a much-appreciated pair of points, also marking the tenth win this year in front of the Sabres fans.

St. Louis Blues 4 - 3 Buffalo Sabres

With their excellent core of players, the Blues can point to a lot of reasons for why they're sitting pretty atop the the Western Conference; 20-goal scorers Aleksander Suglobov and Brian Sutherby on the first line is one, Eli Fagerholm's 2.39 GAA is another and the stellar defensive play of Anton Babchuk and Jean-Michel Bolduc is a third. And yet, even with all these advantages, they were still run close by the hot Sabres and it took a late Nathan Horton goal to give them the win. Suglobov and Sutherby had goals, both in powerplay situations, as did Mark Bell; while they might have been playing catch-up hockey for most of the game, tallies from Mike Cammalleri, Havlat and Jay McClement saw the Sabres draw level even for a matter of minutes. While this did no favours for Miller's stats, Fagerholm conceding three times on just 18 shots made Miller the best goaltender by default.

Current Record: 15-18-2-5, 37 points
Player of the Week: Rick Nash - 0 goals + 4 assists = 4 points
Goaltending Record: Ryan Miller - 3 games, 1 win, 1 shutout; 6 goals allowed, 2.00 GAA; 69 saves, 92.00 Save %