deuces

late in the second period of last nights game i got a call from a friend who was on the road and would be missing the game...he left a message that he was jonesing for an update, and while i was thinking about how i would encapsulate the game thusfar, the number "2" kept coming up...

• two egregious turnovers that lead to two islander goals--one by myers on the first goal (which went in off of his skate) and the other by sekera, who couldn't handle a dainty three foot pass from mike weber...that made it 3-0 isles...
• two teams use two goalies--the sabres pulling miller in favor of lalime, the isles forced to go with kevin poulin when starter nate lawton went down with a knee injury
• two goal posts rung--one on a blistering shot from vanek, the other on a blast from marc-andre gragnani either of which would've changed the complexion of the game (not necessarily the outcome)...
• two games lost to the islanders in less than one week--yes, even with that much left in the game, it was painfully obvious that the sabres didn't have it

i was gonna wait 'til the end of the game before i called him back...that was until nate gerbe scored two goals within seconds and there still being over three minutes left in the third period (come to find out that 5 seconds was the quickest two goals by one player in franchise history, one second off of the nhl record)...

that first goal was wicked:



being able to bury a backhander top-shelf, far side is no small feat...especially from that far out...

the coolest part about gerbe was after the first goal--a simple, emotionally detached fist pump...after the second, there was a bit more emotion, but not much...he was angry, "You want to be angry when you're losing, 4-0," Gerbe said. "It's embarrassing for sure. You just want to keep going out and competing and working hard, and that's what I tried to do there"...we'll forget about the two minute minor he took for slashing seconds later ; )...

anyhow, i get the feeling that he hates to lose and is probably one of only a handful of players who have the emotional capacity for real anger...one of them, ryan miller, was overtly angry after being replaced in goal...another, pat kaleta, had to leave the game because of his hand...yet another, cody mccormick, left midway through the game because of illness...

out of all the players left on the team i can think of only mike weber and maybe steve montador who really get angry...all of the rest don't seem to have the capacity for real anger, kinda like their gm...