Sabres make Panthers look playoff bound in lopsided 1st period

The Florida Panthers aren't particularly good, but on Friday night the woeful Buffalo Sabres made them look like world beaters. So at least we know the Panthers are better than a peewee team. 

Through 20 minutes of Friday's game, the Panthers outshot the Sabres 16-3 and thoroughly throttled them physically. The score may have been knotted at zero after the first frame, but the flow of play was extraordinarily lopsided:

(Courtesy: War-on-Ice)

Not like the Sabres' performance in the first period on Friday was a departure from what we've seen from them in the early going. Though it takes about 30 games for shot attempt differential (or Corsi For percentage) to have any predictive value, the extent to which the Sabres have had their teeth kicked in through four games (and change) is notable:

(Courtesy: Puckalytics.com)

Buffalo's sustained haplessness begs the question asked by Sportsnet's Chris Johnston on Friday night:

Though the club added veterans like Josh Gorges, Matt Moulson and Brian Gionta this summer, they jettisoned their only credible top-of-the-lineup piece when they exercised a compliance buyout on the contract of top-pairing defender Christian Ehrhoff. 

It seems likely that the presence of a bona fide No. 1 defender like Ehrhoff ultimately meant more to the Sabres' overall team quality than a collection of secondary pieces like Gorges, Moulson and Gionta do.