The Boston Herald is reporting some good news for Bruins fans as Marc Savard may be able to make a return to the team in the first round of the playoffs.

According to the Herald, Savard passed an exertion test on Sunday and skated for about a half hour on Monday morning. He is scheduled to have a neuro-psyche test on Tuesday and, if all goes according to plan, should be able to make a return before the end of his team’s series with the Buffalo Sabres.

Savard has been out of action since the March 7 blindside hit from Matt Cooke.

Of course, the Bruins want to make sure that they take every possible precaution with a returning Savard and won’t want to rush his return - especially if they wind up going deep into the playoffs. They’ll have to get by the Sabres first, though, and that’s far from a foregone conclusion.

Still, the news of a potential Savard return has got to give the Bruins a boost in the morale department. They’ve been struggling with confidence ever since the Cooke hit and have been much maligned in the media due to their lack of reaction and passion over the incident.

Savard told the Herald that he was eyeing a possible first round return should the Sabres/Bruins series extend to six or seven games, adding that he considered himself to be still a “little ways off” in terms of getting back to participating in playoff action.

“I haven’t done anything in six weeks except working the remote on the couch, so it’s going to take some time,” he added.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

The Columbus Blue Jackets have traded forward Raffi Torres to the Buffalo Sabres. In Torres, the Sabres get a gritty personality forward who’ll help boost their momentum.

Elliote Friedman is reporting that Nathan Paetsch and a second round pick went over to Columbus in exchange for Torres, so the deal does indeed look to benefit the Sabres more.

Considering Torres’ contributions in the past with the Oilers and on Columbus, he gives the Sabres a nice physical angle that they can use to hammer out space for their forwards.

It’s not a blockbuster deal by any extent, but it doesn’t look like many big names will be moving on this particular trade deadline day.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

The longest-serving current coach in the National Hockey League is staying right where he is. Buffalo Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff, along with GM Darcy Regier, will remain with the club after the Sabres failed to make the playoffs for the second consecutive season.

“We wanted to have a chance to digest the season and gauge their desire and their — how would I say it? — willingness to approach this freshly and with some innovation,” Sabres managing partner Larry Quinn said. “And we’ve taken our process forward enough to know that these are the two guys we want to lead our hockey department next year.”

The Sabres finished 10th in the Eastern Conference, boasting a record of 41-32-9.

Ruff concludes his 11th season behind the bench as the team’s winningest coach with 438. The deal signs him until 2011. For the time being, Ruff is headed to Switzerland to coach the Canadian team at the World Hockey Championships.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

The Buffalo Sabres will have a fairly significant mountain to climb as all-star forward Thomas Vanek is set to be missing a month of action with a broken jaw.

He had surgery Sunday to repair the jaw and is expected to miss about three or four weeks of action.

The injury took place on Saturday night in Buffalo’s game against the Ottawa Senators. Vanek was struck in the face by a slapshot from Ottawa’s Anton Volchenkov. With a mouth full of blood, Vanek immediately skated off of the ice and headed for the team’s dressing room. Coach Lindy Ruff noted that “the teeth got pushed up a bit.”

Ouch.

While there is certainly no good time for injuries of any sort, Vanek’s comes at a particularly bad time for the Sabres. They were just hitting their stride, having pulled wins out of two of their last three games and going 11-5-1 in their last 17 games. The wins shoot them in to seventh place in the Eastern Conference.

For Vanek, the injury also stops a personal streak. He had played in 225 consecutive games, marking a team high. In fact, he has only missed one regular season game since the Sabres selected him with the fifth overall pick in 2003, and that was when he was a healthy scratch against Toronto in April 2006 during his rookie year.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

Buffalo’s Drew Stafford celebrated a hat trick in a game against the Edmonton Oilers, scoring the first one just ten seconds into a matchup that the Oilers will be struggling to forget.

You see, Stafford’s hat trick might have been marked as a significant accomplishment in its own right. But it came on a night when the visiting Sabres absolutely annihilated the Oilers in a 10-2 beating that currently stands as the single worst loss on home ice in Edmonton Oilers history.

“It was a debacle of monumental proportions. There were plenty of areas of our game plan that could be criticized,” said Oilers head coach Craig MacTavish, leaving nothing to the imagination in his post-game comments. “The effort tonight, we were just chasing our tails all night. We’re not as masochistic as it may seem watching that game. We have to execute our game plan a whole lot better than we did,” he added.

And indeed, after watching the contest it might seen that the Oilers were feeling just a touch masochistic after the 10-2 loss. The performance, disappointing to say the least, marked the end of a three-game winning streak for the club and will certainly deflate some egos.

Perhaps tellingly, the 8 goal differential actually beat the previous record set in a 9-2 loss at home. That 9-2 loss was to Chicago…earlier this very season.

“We didn’t think that this could happen to us again,” said Steve Staios to reporters after the game. “Especially the way that we were playing of late. Hopefully the experience we have from trying to shake it off last time is the way to do it because we started playing better and got ourselves into a playoff position. You can’t sugarcoat how tough a night it was but we have to put this behind us quickly and move on.”

Even Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff knew what the story was. “It was one of those nights where we caught them flat,” he said. “I’ve been behind the bench on a team where you have a night like that and it’s tough. The harder they tried it seemed like the worse it was getting.”

Ain’t that the truth. The Oilers will need to turn things around quickly and forget this game ever happened. Are there lessons to learn from it? Sure. But a loss like this happens because a team just isn’t bringing it, plain and simple. There’s nothing particularly “off” in Edmonton and there’s no reason for the coaches and managers to start thinking about tinkering. Two losses of such magnitude in one season will certainly look bad in the record books, but the team can’t focus on those games.

Instead, one set of statistics stands out as more important right now: 24-20-3. The Oilers aren’t looking too bad currently overall, sitting in a 4-way tie in the Western Conference with 51 points (Vancouver, Columbus, and Minnesota also share the spot). Edmonton needs to pull it together, overcome the tough lost, and get back to holding that playoff spot. The game against Minnesota on Friday has special importance, as the Oilers will be able to prove they belong in the post-season with a win over their rivals.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

2007-2008 Regular Season Record: 39-31-12, good for fourth in the Northeast Division and tenth in the Eastern Conference.

Leading Scorer: Derek Roy led the Sabres in points with 81 in 78 regular season games. He had 32 goals and added 49 assists. Behind him, Jason Pominville posted an excellent 80 points in 82 games, including 27 goals and 53 assists. Thomas Vanek led the team in goals with 36.

Goaltending: For the Sabres, it was all about Ryan Miller in the 2007-2008 NHL regular season. He played in 76 games and finished with a record of 36-27-10. With a GAA of 2.64 and a save percentage of .906, Miller held the fort rather well. He was backed up by Jocelyn Thibault.

Regular Season Summary: The Buffalo Sabres started off the year in an interesting position, to say the least. Their co-captains of the previous season, Daniel Briere and Chris Drury, had gone off to join other teams. Thomas Vanek was almost swept away by the Edmonton Oilers and a ludicrous offer sheet, but the Sabres scooped him with a 7-year $50-million contract to match the offer sheet from Kevin Lowe.

Goalie Thibault was brought aboard to replace the departed Ty Conklin, but Miller would stand the test of time and play in most of the season’s games. A cycling captaincy system was put in place, with Jochen Hecht serving as the first captain for a month, followed by Toni Lydman for November and Brian Campbell for December. Campbell was subsequently traded to the San Jose Sharks on February 26, 2008 in a move that brought Steve Bernier to Buffalo.

The Sabres played in the outdoor game on January 1, 2008 against the Pittsburgh Penguins. The game was played in Buffalo at Ralph Wilson stadium and drew a huge crowd. After winning the President’s Trophy in the 2006-2007 NHL season, the Buffalo Sabres went on to miss the playoffs the following year.

Outlook: The Sabres really haven’t done much in the off-season thus far to change their fortunes and will likely ice the same team in the upcoming 2008-2009 NHL season as they did the previous year. Craig Rivet has been added to the defence core and Patrick Lalime replaced the outgoing Jocelyn Thibault in the back-up goaltender position, but the forward line-up remains the same. Whether that will produce different results remains to be seen, of course.

One thing the Sabres will continue to have going for them is speed. They play an up-tempo game, which can throw people off in the Eastern Conference. They boast a lot of potential scorers on the team and can share the wealth relatively well, but there is no particular stand-out player. This may be a good thing, as the Sabres work best when they work as one complete unit. With a little more effort and perhaps a key forward acquisition, the Sabres may make the playoffs in the upcoming NHL season.

The Buffalo Sabres have re-signed defenceman Teppo Numminen to a one-year contract worth $1.1-million.

The signing comes after Numminen was cleared to be able to play by the medical staff and doctors at the Cleveland Clinic. He had missed all but Buffalo’s final game of the season last season after having heart surgery to repair a faulty valve.

The Sabres also reached an undisclosed monetary settlement with Numminen after a grievance was filed last season over the team suspending him without pay in September after doctors ruled he required surgery following a routine checkup at the clinic. Numminen claimed the Sabres owed him a portion of his $2.6-million salary once he was allowed to practice with the team on a non-contact basis in November.

Despite the issue, the defenceman still wanted to play with the Sabres.

“He wanted to come back and we wanted him back,” Sabres GM Darcy Regier said. “And you obviously don’t want to enter into a new contract without resolving the past, so we did that.”

Numminen provides the Sabres with eight defencemen with NHL experience, including Craig Rivet, who was acquired by Buffalo in a trade with San Jose last month.

In one of the first big trades of the day, Buffalo Sabres defenseman Brian Campbell has been traded to the San Jose Sharks for Steve Bernier and a first round draft pick.

The trade benefits San Jose in giving Joe Thornton someone to pass to on the point. It also gives the Sharks an excellent power play quarterback, as Campbell’s speed and ability with the puck is very good. He doesn’t own the biggest shot in the league, but he should be able to help San Jose conduct a nice powerplay with his ability to see the ice.

In Bernier, the Sabres get a talented young player on the wing. Obviously the first round draft pick is also enticing. The trade will also likely drive up the value of Ryan Miller, who may become very interesting to several teams in the NHL in a couple of years.

Other trades on the day thus far include Wade Belak to Florida for a fifth round draft pick and New Jersey Devils tough guy Cam Janssen was traded to St. Louis for Bryce Salvador.

Potential trades are currently being discussed involving Marion Hossa, Brad Richards, Ollie Jokinen, and a few other big names. We’ll continue to keep you posted during the next few hours at Hockeydraft.ca.

It was a horrifying moment.

Midway through the third period of Sunday night’s Florida Panthers versus Buffalo Sabres game, Panthers’ forward Richard Zednik was cut across the throat by a teammates skate. Thankfully, he is in stable condition after surgery to close the deep gash on the right side of his neck.

The incident delayed the game for fifteen minutes and led to discussion about whether to call the game off altogether. Zednik was behind the play and skating into the right corner of the Sabres’ zone when teammate Olli Jokinen was upended by Sabres’ forward Clarke MacArthur. Jokinen fell head-first to the ice and his right leg flew up and struck Zednik directly on the side of the neck.

Clutching his neck, Zednik raced to the Florida bench leaving a long trail of blood behind him on the ice. When he arrived, he nearly fell into the arms of a team trainer who quickly applied a towel to the cut. Zednik was then helped off the ice by the trainer and teammate Jassen Cullimore and escorted to the Panthers’ dressing room.

“The surgery was successful and he’s resting comfortably in the hospital,” Panthers spokesman Brian Goldman said after the game.

“We shouldn’t have finished the game,” Jokinen said. “I saw the replay, that it was my skate that hit him in the throat. I think we were all in shock. I’ve never seen anything like that. There are bigger things than finishing the game. It was terrifying. I didn’t think anyone on our team was thinking hockey out there after an injury like that. If it was my call, I would have gone to the hospital with him.”

NHL vice president Colin Campbell consulted with Sabres general manager Darcy Regier and referee Bill McCreary in a tunnel after Zednik was loaded into an ambulance. Campbell, who was not available for comment, attended the game in part because his son plays for the Panthers. In a statement, the NHL said that Campbell talked to commissioner Gary Bettman and decided to continue the game after knowing that Zednik was stable, that trainers had stopped the bleeding, and that the teams were willing to go on.

“I can fully understand if they wanted to cancel the whole game,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “It was pretty solemn. There wasn’t a lot being said on the bench. There was just more concern for Richard than anything else. When you see something like that, it isn’t about playing anymore. But I said, ‘We’re going to finish the game and it’s going to be what it’s going to be.”‘

All of us at HockeyDraft.Ca hold Richard in our thoughts and prayers at this time.

The Winter Classic probably couldn’t have turned out any better for the 70,000 fans in attendance. The biggest crowd in NHL history enjoyed the NHL’s first outdoor game in the United States and, to top it all off, modern hockey’s most popular and enigmatic player scored the winner in an overtime shootout. If you love the new NHL, it simply doesn’t get any better than that.

With snow pouring down on the ice impacting the passing game and changing the way the players on the Buffalo Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins handled the puck, the Winter Classic became as much about adapting the game as it was about recreating tradition. Unlike the previous outdoor game in Edmonton, however, the temperatures did nothing to take away the physical aspect of the game. With snow flying, players from both teams amped up the physicality and put on a show for the fans and the viewers in a rough and tumble contest that went the distance.

“When you see 70,000 people jammed into a stadium to watch hockey it’s a good sign,” Sidney Crosby said after the game. “The atmosphere and environment, I don’t think you can beat that. I think it’s something to look back and say we had a lot of great memories being part of it.”

The NHL needs moments like the Winter Classic and like the opening games in Europe. The complacency of simply doing the same thing and selling the game to fans that are already hockey fans will not expand the territory of the game and it will not improve the game’s relationship with the United States, the largest potential sports market on earth. Young players like Sidney Crosby know that.

Crosby smiled throughout the entire game, essentially. He had too. Any fan of the game would have been smiling, too, with over 70,000 packed into Ralph Wilson stadium. People wore Pittsburgh sweaters and people supported the Sabres as well, but for the most part people were there to enjoy the greatest game on the face of the earth.

“You know, it may not be the best hockey game because of the situation, because of the weather, because of the snow, but the atmosphere was incredible - it was incredible,” said Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff.

The fans were on their feet before the pre-game warm-up to welcome the players from both teams as they made the long trek from their dressing rooms, through the tunnel and out to the rink. The ovation sent chills, just another reminder that the biggest crowd in NHL history made this such a special day. The players could feel the moment as well, unable to wipe the smiles off their faces as they battled the snow-covered ice surface in warm-up.

The celebrations for each goal scored in the Penguins 2-1 victory were immense, with each team celebrating like they had won the Stanley Cup. As Crosby scored the winner, both teams flooded the ice with congratulations. This was no ordinary game.

As for future versions of the Winter Classic, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is certainly looking at it. “This is the type of event we certainly will be looking at doing in the future,” he said. Whether or not it will be an annual event is certainly an issue to be looked at, as the logistics and other elements of the game will be looked at over the coming weeks to determine a suitable answer. NHL clubs are already lined up hoping to stage the next one, with Montreal, Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, Colorado and the New York Rangers among those said to be first in line.

As the snow clears on the Winter Classic and the analysis begins, one thing was for certain. For one day, on a snowy New Year’s Day in Buffalo in 2008, we were all like kids again.