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Game behind the game is a hit for Sabers mates Rasmus Dahlin and Casey Mittelstadt

Don Granato wants to see competitiveness out of all of his players no matter what they’re doing, and it’s one reason he loves Rasmus Dahlin. The Sabres’ defenseman hates to lose hockey games, like he should. But he’s not fond of losing at golf, video games or anything else, either.

The Buffalo coach peeled back the curtain following a training camp practice last week with an entertaining anecdote about a training system called RapidShot that the Sabers purchased for their shooting room in a restricted area of ​​their KeyBank Center quarters.

The machine passes a sequence of 16 pucks in short order and electronically calculates a score using variables of a player’s shot after they receive the passes. Players can keep track of their own scores and follow their teammates’ progress on a phone app, and that’s where the one-upsmanship comes in.

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“So Dahlin went in there and had a high score, and Casey Mittelstadt went in there to break the high score and he did,” a smiling Granato recounted. “Dahlin saw it on his phone later and actually went back in to break it. And he has the record now. According to the guys who installed the machine, they’ve never seen scores that high, which is good. But that’s competitiveness.

“Those two guys specifically, and I would put (Dylan Cozens) in that mix, too, because I think he’s on that chart as well. They just don’t like to lose. And it’s fun to see.”

Carrying 'quiet swagger,' Rasmus Dahlin growing into role as Sabers leader

Dahlin’s poise off the ice has progressed at the same rapid pace as his play on the Sabres’ blue line.

Mittelstadt and Dahlin, close friends and roommates during their time in Buffalo, were going so hard at the game that they developed blisters on their hands and had to take a few days off from the machine.

“But I wasn’t out of the building and came back to get the high score,” a laughing Dahlin made sure to point out. “I was in here. I heard (Mittelstadt) beat me so I went back there until I beat it. But the real news is he’s back on top. I have to take about three days and I’ll be back on top “

“You feel like you can always score better,” Mittelstadt said. “Usually you miss one or two shots but if you don’t miss any, you can get a super high score. You just keep going and going. A game is like 30 seconds, maybe a minute. It’s super fast. Only 16 shots a game. I’ve been in there like an hour sometimes. Before you know it, you’ve kept hitting reset and you’ve played like 10 games.”

Mittelstadt said he had not checked the game for a few hours but said he had heard Anders Bjork had passed both he and Dahlin, so they now have some work to do to get back atop the leaderboard.

“There’s camaraderie to it,” Dahlin said. “We could play any game and there would still be the same stuff going on. Tennis, golf, whatever. But that particular thing is good for you. You’re working on your shot at the same time you’re having fun with your buddies.”

Both Dahlin and Mittelstadt sheepishly showed off their blisters when asked. The palms of the hand take a beating from gripping the stick and firing all those pucks in quick succession.

“I got a little one there but it’s healed now,” Mittelstadt said. “Hey, it was a lot worse at first.”

For the first time since March of 2020, the media returned to do interviews in the Sabres’ dressing room last week. Off limits since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the doors to the team’s downtown lair swung open following Tuesday’s game against Philadelphia and after Wednesday’s practice.

The room will be open on a daily basis starting this week and media access will be restored to what it was prior to the start of the pandemic. While you would think that most players would prefer to keep the media out of the room, that isn’t really the case. They had long ago tired of Zoom calls or getting pulled out of the room to appear in an interview area.

Cozens is one of an unusual group of young players in that he’s played 120 career NHL games and had never seen a reporter in the dressing room because his debut came during the 2021 pandemic season.

“It’s just something new to experience. I guess every year right now something new is getting added for me,” said Cozens. “It’s something to get used to I guess, right? We usually like to hang out here for a long time after and say what we say. That’s obviously not going to be quite the same. It’s just going to be a new experience having media in right away after games.”

Cozens said interviews when he played junior hockey at Lethbridge were done outside the dressing room. When he played Team Canada at the World Juniors, players were brought to an Olympic-style mixed zone to meet with reporters.

And Cozens knows that as the Sabers’ profile in the league starts to grow, dealing with the media will become a bigger part of the job.

“It’s cool,” he said. “When you’re going for the Stanley Cup, everything’s kind of going on camera at that point when the media is in. You have to get used to it.”

With the NHL and NBA returning to normal access, the media has returned to the dressing rooms in all four major professional leagues.

Mike Harrington: Dylan Cozens found his scoring touch with Team Canada and wants to keep it with the Sabres

Scoring goals is going to be no laughing matter for Cozens this season. In his third NHL campaign, it’s going to be the 21-year-old’s serious point of emphasis after a 13-goal season in 2021-22.

• The Sabers announced 9,125 tickets were distributed for Tuesday’s exhibition home opener against Philadelphia. Looked like around 5,000 in the house but that’s not the story. The real point is how the ticket-sold count is much higher than last preseason and many regular season games in the first half.

It shows a clear increase in the season ticket base, which was around 6,500 last year. The Sabers are still selling season tickets and partial packages, and a total count won’t be released likely until the week of the season opener. But it seems like a slow return from fans on both sides of the border.

• Speaking of Sabers attendance, I had not noticed the ugly conflict on the Sabres’ schedule on Thursday, Dec. 1. It’s the lone visit of the season to KeyBank Center by the Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche, and it starts 70 minutes ahead of kickoff in Gillette Stadium for the Bills’ Thursday night against the New England Patriots.

• Old friend Rasmus Ristolainen to Flyers reporters on new coach John Tortorella: “I think he’s exactly what we needed here.” Ristolainen didn’t make the trip to Buffalo for Tuesday’s exhibition game against the Sabres.

• Veteran Tampa Bay writer Greg Auman of the Athletic tweeted a picture from a Lightning fan with a jersey of goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy draped across the front door of a house waiting for the arrival of Hurricane Ian. The fan accompanied the picture with the notation, “They were out of plywood. He saves everything else.”

After the apocalyptic storm made a turn and decimated Southwest Florida rather than heading into Tampa Bay, the Lightning Foundation and the foundation’s owner Jeff Vinik each donated $1 million toward relief efforts.

• Leafs star Auston Matthews threw a ceremonial first pitch prior to Tuesday’s Blue Jays-Yankees game and brought linemates Mitch Marner and Michael Bunting with him to meet Aaron Judge, one night before the 6-foot-7 slugger tied Roger Maris’ American League home. run record that had stood for 61 years. Said the 6-foot-3 Matthews: “I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that small standing next to someone but it’s really cool to meet a guy who’s at the top of his sport.”

• There’s been some big injuries around the league in preseason, topped by the oblique strain suffered by Toronto center John Tavares that will keep him out past the season opener. Anaheim star Trevor Zegras left Thursday’s game against Arizona early after taking a big open-ice hit and his status is uncertain, while Leafs defensemen Jake Muzzin and Jordie Benn were both injured Wednesday against Montreal. That sparked unsigned restricted free agent Rasmus Sandin to return to camp and sign a two-year, $2.8 million deal.

This corner’s view is that 6-8 preseason games are simply too many. The Sabers, like most teams, have carried more than 50 players in camp for over a week and that’s an unnecessary number. Year-round training means these guys can be ready for the season after no more than four exhibitions. But there’s revenue to be made with these games in lots of markets and economic realities always matter.

• A release on new food offerings for the Islanders’ 50th anniversary season, which is their second in UBS Arena, included a note on their Buffalo chicken cheesesteak, topped with white cheddar sauce, blue cheese crumbles and green onions. Sign me up come March when the Sabers are there.

In an ode to the 50th anniversary, the Islanders are also offering a souvenir ice cream goalie helmet with team-colored blue and orange swirls in the vanilla ice cream, and blue and orange sprinkles.

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