Devils 3, Sabres 2

Well, they did it. It all came into place.

Minnesota takes care of Buffalo last night on the Devils off night and the Devils take care of the retro-jerseyed Sabres tonight. Not much changes. Buffalo remains #1 in the East, New Jersey remains #2 in the East. But Buffalo has 93 points, and New Jersey has 92. It's close. 20 days or so left until the end of the season. The battle for Eastern Conference domination is officially on.

Very exciting game. The Buffalo crowd seemed bored with it because it wasn't 8-7 or anything like that, but it was pretty dang exciting nonetheless. Well played by both sides.

It started off with a bang, Cam Janssen and Andrew Peters threw down pretty much right after the game started. Afterwards, Zubrus got the first goal for the Sabres and it looked like things were off and running. Travis Zajac answered him not very long afterwards, getting assists from his linemates and tying things up at one. The rest of the period held no more scoring, but it was by no means uneventful.

The second period started and as soon as it started, Mike Rupp was the recipient of a nice rebound and scored a goal for the Devils a mere 33 seconds into the period. With Colin White still out and no replacement for him (and why the heck not? someone explain this to me) and Gionta out and Rasmussen taken out early in the game, lines and ice time were shuffled for a whole lot of players and Rupp saw some action he would normally not see. He made use of it for his 5th goal of the season. The second period slowed down for a while and it picked up steam at the end of the period. At 16:12 of the second period, Daniel Briere got a nice pass and shot a nice shot past Brodeur for his 28th goal of the year. This tied things up at two goals apiece and then Sergei Brylin got flagged for high-sticking. Not only that, but he got the dreaded 4-minute penalty. Not sure if it was worth it, seemed pretty cheap to me. But I'm partial to the Devils. Anyway, with the Sabres just tying things up and the crowd brought back from the brink of death and with a FOUR-MINUTE penalty just called, things were looking Buffalo's way. It appeared to be disastrous. This was the last thing the Devils needed.

But lo and behold, what's this? The Sabres are playing all over the place. Jim Dowd takes advantage of their haphazard style of play and leads an odd-man rush with Langenbrunner. He notices he can't slide the puck to Langenbrunner, the angle was not right and the backcheck was too fierce. Instead, Dowd maneuvered up toward the goal, flung the puck behind him to Rafalski and Ralf let one fly into the net right before the end of the period. A rare shorthanded goal for the Devils!! And a HUGE goal, it could maybe be the biggest goal of the season because that halted the Sabres momentum in its tracks and no scoring was done in the third period, but there was plenty of action.

The teams will meet again one more time, and the stakes may even be higher.