Sabres And Flyers Start Long Road to Stanley Cup

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Sabres And Flyers Start Long Road to Stanley Cup

If you place significance on a team’s momentum heading into the Stanley Cup playoffs, this opening round matchup between #2 seed Philadelphia and #7 seed Buffalo could be an ‘upset special’. The Flyers limped into the playoffs wining only 3 of their final 10 games (3-4-3). Buffalo, meanwhile, was one of the hottest teams in the league to conclude the regular season going 8-1-1 in their final 10 games. The best of 7 opening round series will get underway at Philadelphia’s Wachovia Center on Thursday night.

By any metric, the Flyers are a formidable opponent with the NHL’s #3 scoring offense and a serviceable defense that ranks just below the top 10. There is always a concern about the Philly goaltending but Sergey Bobrovsky has taken over the starting job and played well enough to have the Flyers in the mix for the best record in the conference all the way until the end of the season. He’s also got a serviceable backup in Brian Boucher. Despite what is likely an upgrade between the pipes since last season the Flyers remain a team that is at their best when they’re scoring a lot of goals.

We don’t get opportunities to use popular Southern catch phrases in the NHL very often, but the Buffalo Sabres may very well have been ‘playin’ possum’ for much of the season. YTD, they’ve got a mediocre scoring defense and a top ten scoring offense but as we noted above they were one of the league’s best teams at the end of the regular season with only 1 regulation loss in their final ten games. Ryan Miller has regained the form that made him one of the league’s best goalies in the past few years though he did miss several games down the stretch with what was described as an ‘upper body injury’. He’s expected to return for the opening game of this series and it could be that the injury was a smokescreen to give him some additional rest without incurring the league’s wrath.

With Miller back in net there’s every reason to think that the Sabres can compete in this game as well as the series. The Flyers were plagued by inconsistent play at points this season, and if they’re on a ‘down tick’ entering the playoffs could be ripe for an upset. The head to head series has been virtually even—since 2008 Philadelphia has won 7 of 12 games but the Sabres have split 6 games in Philadelphia. This season the teams split four games with each winning once on enemy ice. This could prove to be one of the best first round series and we think the Sabres are very much a ‘live dog’ not only in game 1 (+140) but to eliminate the Flyers and advance (+135).