Sagging Slugs

So I have to ask the question that I'm sure is on anyone's mind who has watched the Ottawa-Buffalo series to this point - who are these strange men in blue and yellow, and what have they done with the Sabres?

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the 'Slugs fall from grace, really I am. But is this really the team we expected to see? Not just in this series, but in the entire postseason I've yet to see them really break out with the talent and skill we all know they possess. They've looked simply normal, average, somewhat dazed at even being in the postseason, and horribly outmatched by a Senators team that is playing amazing hockey.

And this Sabres club is not an average team - it's a well-oiled machine, a dominating presence, a deep, offensively talented, defensively responsible team.

Or it was.

I guess it begs the question, is it just the eternal choking dog syndrome that has plagued Buffalo, preventing them from reaching the holy grail of hockey? We here in DC certainly know a thing about playoff collapses, so it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Or is it maybe the fact that Ottawa has been so dominant as to completely throw the Sabres off their game? Are the Sens simply shutting down the Sabres like no team has managed to do consistently to this point?

Could be a little of both. Whatever the reason, the Sens squeak by with a 1-0 victory tonight (which could have been much more lopsided save for the freakishly good performance by Ryan Miller, your hippie dippie goaltender). They take a 3-0 lead in the series, with another game on home ice in two days. Every single player in the red and black is firing on all cylinders. Everyone is involved and everyone has to be involved. As I've mentioned before and as we've seen so many times in the past, the postseason is when depth is the most important.

Buffalo was supposed to have that depth too. This series was supposed to go seven games and who knows, it still might. It was supposed to be a hotly contested, tightly played, evenly matched round, one for the ages, and we've seen glimpses of it. But right now Buffalo is on the ropes and the Sens are flying high.

Game 4, Wednesday night...