BUFFALO – Attitude, Ted Nolan said, “is everything.”
“It’s like a flat tire,” the interim Sabres coach said this morning, “if you don’t change it, you ain’t going nowhere.”
Sabres defenseman Brayden McNabb’s great attitude about his one-day assignment to Rochester helped the 22-year-old compile one goal and three points in the Americans’ 6-1 win against the Utica Comets, Nolan said.
“He’s knows that he’s got a little ways to go before becoming a full-time NHL player,” Nolan said. “He went down and made us look bad for sending us down because he played so well.”
McNabb added: “I felt pretty good. It’s a little bit slower pace compared to here. So it’s a little bit of adjustment that way.”
Still, McNabb, who was summoned following the game, will sit his third straight game tonight against the New York Rangers inside the First Niagara Center.
Nolan had said McNabb would only sit once, but the Sabres fielded the same lineup again Saturday following their 3-2 overtime win against Toronto.
With defenseman Alexander Sulzer still out, Jamie McBain, a healthy scratch the last four games, will return.
“It’s an unfortunate situation that happened with him because I’m trying to learn everybody here, I’m trying to get (Tyler) Myers’ game going, (Christian) Ehrhoff’s game going,” Nolan said about McBain sitting. “He just kind of got caught up into the mix. So it was unfair to sit him out for any other reason. But we had to find out about other people.”
