Simmed up to playoffs of 2016-17

First the good news.

Our Buffalo Sabres finished the season 50-26-6. Mrazek finished the season with 49 wins, I think that is tied with Marty Brodeur/Roberto Luongo for a league record. The first half of our season went amazing. We were picking up wins all over the place. Then in the second half we didn't play awful we just didn't play to our potential. That being said we finished first in the entire league. We face the Philadelphia Flyers in the first round (huge turn around for them, I checked the standings earlier this season and they were 2-13)

Now the bad news.

As always we get caught with injuries right in the last few weeks of the season. Schenn went down for 5 weeks around 2 weeks before the playoffs. McNabb is out for 7 weeks and had that injury around a week before the playoffs. Now the big one, we lost Hunter Shinkaruk for 3 weeks 2 days before the playoffs. Hunter scored 45 goals for us and was our go to guy. Obviously that hurts but other guys are going to have to stepup if we want a chance at advancing.

Philadelphia has a pretty good lineup. Their forwards are all developed through the Flyers system. Still have Giroux/Voracek/Simmonds/Hartnell/Briere. They have Brent Seabrook on defence who is a pretty big piece to their lineup. Then in net they have (83)Cory Schneider. Obviously they have a pretty good team but even with our key injuries I think we should be able to pull out of this series the winner.


Game 1

PHI 4 BUF 2

Game 2

BUF 4 PHI 2

Game 3

PHI 3 BUF 2

Game 4

PHI 4 BUF 3

Game 5 (Shinkaruk back)

BUF 2 PHI 1 (Shinkaruk 2 assists)

Game 6

BUF 3 PHI 2

Game 7

BUF 4 PHI 3 (Shinkaruk 3 assists)


Wow. That was a great series. We were horrible first few games but when Shinkaruk came back we completely changed our game. I would compare this to Chicago getting Bolland back a few seasons ago and rallying from being down 3-0 in the series to tying it. Only our series had the better outcome. Great way to start the playoffs!


EDIT: Lost Girgensons longterm in game 7...FUCK