"We played a pretty good game," defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen said. "I didn't think they had too many scoring chances. The other games we played before, the other teams had more scoring chances. We played alright."
Neither McCabe nor Gorges seemed to have skipped a beat despite having missed time, skating 18:48 and 16:04 of ice time, respectively. Both players were also steady presences on the penalty kill on night it went 2-for-2.
After the game, Dan Bylsma spoke about the element of physicality that was missed with those two players out of the lineup, and it was recognized by their teammates as well.
"Georgie's a guy who's not afraid to go out there and block a shot, no matter who it is, and put his body on the line," defenseman Cody Franson said. "Caber's a lot of the same way. They both try to be very physical, they play hard along the walls and they do a good job of trying to take the middle of the ice away on teams. When you have two guys like that who you can insert into your lineup, who keep the offensive players honest on the other team, I think it's a big help."
Meanwhile, Dmitry Kulikov is continuing to grow more comfortable as he distances himself from the 12-game absence caused by an injury to his lower back. He's been playing on the top pair alongside Ristolainen, and on Saturday he skated a team-high 25:23.
"We still have a lot of room to improve," Ristolainen. "We haven't played that many games in a row together so now we're building that chemistry and then we'll hopefully get it going better. But yeah, it's going alright so far. We play a lot of minutes so we've got to lead the team."
The Sabres are still without Zach Bogosian, who did not skate on Sunday and remains day-to-day with a rib injury. But if the other defensemen can finally remain healthy, Saturday was a strong start for the new pairs.
