Vorstellung des Teams » served as the Penguins assistant

WINNIPEG http://www.officialducks.com/authentic-adidas-john-gibson-jersey , Manitoba (AP) Dustin Byfuglien is a big problem for Vegas.The 6-foot-5, 260-pound Winnipeg defenseman can do it all, as the Golden Knights saw up close when he helped the Jets win Game 1 of the Western Conference finals with a goal and an assist.”We got moving our feet right away,” Byfuglien said. ”And the ice opened up.”Byfuglien has a powerful shot, as he showed with a slap shot 1:05 into the Jets’ 4-2 victory .The 33-year-old former forward, who played right wing for the Chicago Blackhawks during their Stanley Cup run in 2010, can join a rush on offense in even-strength situations and plays on the power play. The NFL-sized player is nimble enough to skate fluidly and he handles the puck with soft hands. Byfuglien can crunch opponents against the boards or on the open ice with checks and kill penalties with savvy positioning.In Game 1, he did all of that and more.”You saw the Dustin Byfuglien spectrum,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said. ”He can shoot the puck a ton. He can make soft-hand plays and he can be as big and strong as you want out there.”Vegas center William Karlsson was asked to compare Byfuglien with any other player in the league. And he was stumped.”He’s kind of one of a kind,” Karlsson said.If the expansion Golden Knights can’t figure out a way to keep the puck away from Byfuglien and work around him offensively, their inaugural season may not last beyond this series.Game 2 is Monday night in Winnipeg.Byfuglien leads the league’s defensemen with 15 points and five multi-point games in the playoffs.”When he is on his game, he is as good as anybody,” Vegas coach Gerrard Gallant. ”He’s a big strong man and can play the game any way you want to play it.”Buf is a good player Authentic Josh Manson Jersey , but hopefully we don’t give him too many chances to load up like we did (in Game 1) and take that big shot.”The Blackhawks gave Byfuglien a shot to play in the NHL, taking a flyer on the Minnesota native in the eighth round with the No. 245 pick overall in 2003. He played his first full season in the league five years later and had 11 goals and five assists for Chicago during the 2010 playoffs.Byfuglien didn’t get to celebrate the championship for very long because the Blackhawks traded him to less than three weeks after hoisting the Cup. Chicago sent him to the Atlanta Thrashers, who became the Jets, to help manage its salary cap. He has become a three-time All-Star with the franchise and a player respected enough on the blue line to be in the running for the Norris Trophy six times.Byfuglien, though, got off to a slow start offensively this season with a slump that seems improbable for a player with five goals in 13 playoff games this year. He began the season with a 29-game goal drought and finished with eight goals, his fewest in five seasons.”He had a helluva year and it was masked by the fact that he didn’t score a goal for a long time and didn’t generate points,” Maurice said. ”The question was `What’s wrong with Dustin Byfuglien?’ And the answer was, `Absolutely nothing,’ because our hockey team was winning and he was playing right.”Byfuglien has been businesslike around reporters lately, appearing to be focused on his tasks instead of showing off tricks with a cosmetic tooth he can pop in and out of his mouth with his tongue. When a reporter asked about the Atlanta hat he wore in the dressing room before Game 1, wondering if it was a nod to his season with the Thrashers, he wasn’t in the mood to play along.”The what?” he asked. ”I don’t even know what hat I got on.”Byfuglien also wasn’t interested in comparing the Jets’ run to his success with the Blackhawks.”That was a while ago Ondrej Kase Jersey ,” he said.Discussing the challenges of facing Vegas goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury also didn’t interest him.”Get it behind him,” he said. ”Shoot pucks and hopefully they go in.”His first shot against Fleury found the back of the net, and the blast probably pushed the netting to its limit because it was so powerful.”That first goal was a bomb,” Vegas defenseman Deryk Engelland said.—Follow Larry Lage at https://twitter.com/larrylage— BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) See ya, Sid. Hello, Jack Eichel.Once the shock of being traded wore off, Conor Sheary put aside his past of playing alongside Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, and began eagerly looking ahead to what might be in store with the Buffalo Sabres.”I wasn’t expecting it, but at the same time you have to look at the positives,” Sheary said Thursday, a day after the Buffalo gave up a conditional fourth-round draft pick to acquire him and defenseman Matt Hunwick.”I have to put my Pittsburgh years behind me now,” the third-year NHL forward said. ”I’m super excited with the new chapter in my life.”In Buffalo Rickard Rakell Jersey , Sheary gets the opportunity to recreate his role as a play-making, two-way forward on a line centered by Eichel.”When you’re playing with a guy like that, you kind of try to get him the puck as much as you can,” Sheary said.”I think a big part of my game is creating turnovers and getting chances for my linemates,” he added. ”Hopefully, we can create some chemistry there. It’ll be awesome and maybe we’ll grow something with that.”With two years left on his contract, Sheary was the odd-man out in Pittsburgh, which freed up $5.25 million in salary cap space in trading both players. The Penguins quickly used some of the savings to re-sign forward Riley Sheahan to a $2.1 million, one-year contract.The Sabres, by comparison, lack play-making depth at their top-line wing positions, especially after trading Evander Kane to San Jose in February. Buffalo’s top three centers and Kane accounted for scoring 94 of the team’s league-worst 199 goals last season.Five-on-five production was also an issue cited by general manager Jason Botterill as the reason he acquired Sheary. All but eight of Sheary’s 95 points in 184 career games have come in even-strength situations.Another benefit for the rebuilding Sabres was adding a two-time Stanley Cup winner to a team that has finished last in three of the past five seasons.”I think if I can just bring a little of that playoff experience to the locker room and try to change the culture, that’ll be a good thing Womens Ryan Getzlaf Jersey ,” said Sheary, who credited Crosby for being a mentor. ”He definitely taught me a lot. And I’ll definitely take that and use that to my advantage moving forward.”Botterill previously served as the Penguins assistant GM and had a hand in signing Sheary, who was a late bloomer in part because scouts considered him too small at 5-foot-8 and 175 pounds. Undrafted after completing his college career at UMass, he signed an amateur tryout contract with the Penguins’ AHL affiliate in March 2014.Two year later, Sheary made his NHL debut and eventually scored six goals, including a winner, and 10 points during Pittsburgh’s first of two championship runs.After scoring 23 goals and 53 points in 61 games in 2016-17, Sheary’s production dropped last year, when he finished with 18 goals and 30 points in 79 games.Sheary blamed the drop-off on a lapse in confidence that lead to a midseason slump in which he had three goals and six assists in 35 games. He closed the year with six goals and two assists in his final 15 games.”I think toward the end of the year I finally found myself again,” he said. ”Although I didn’t score in the playoffs, I felt as though I was contributing. Hopefully, I can build on that going forward.”—