Two second-period goals followed the scoreless first, and over the final 40 minutes, the Sabres held a 31-14 advantage in shots on goal. As scheduled, Devon Levi relieved Georgiev for a six-save third period.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we took the game over,\u201d Ruff said.<\/p>\n
Georgiev has done a lot of winning in his career \u2013 151 total victories, including league-leading totals in 2022-23 (40) and 2023-24 (38) \u2013 and intends to do more. He\u2019s hungry to re-establish himself as one of the NHL\u2019s top netminders, and this preseason marks his first step on that quest.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously (want to) get back to where I\u2019m one of the better goalies in the league,\u201d he said. \u201cPlayed a lot of games, got to an All-Star (Game); I feel like this is my level, and I want to get back to that \u2013 and be a big part of getting to the playoffs here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sabres had already expressed confidence in their goalie group of Luukkonen and Alex Lyon in Buffalo, plus Levi continuing to develop in Rochester. That said, a back-in-form Georgiev would force some tough roster decisions with the regular season right around the corner.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just got to use this platform,\u201d said Ruff, an assistant coach with the Rangers when Georgiev broke into the league there. \u201cI think it\u2019s an opportunity for him to say, \u2018I can be a goaltender that can really help you guys out.\u2019 Every opportunity that he gets is a statement that he\u2019s gonna make to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here are some more takeaways from Buffalo\u2019s 4-0 win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two second-period goals followed the scoreless first, and over the final 40 minutes, the Sabres held a 31-14…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-162954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}