Beaulieu dominates Gudas in the final seconds of the third period.

His team may have been dominated on Saturday afternoon but veteran defenseman Nathan Beaulieu sent a message nonetheless.

Beaulieu and his Buffalo Sabres were taking on the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday afternoon and it was never really much of a game as the Flyers brought the heat early on and never seemed to take their foot off the gas peddle. It was a disappointing outing for the Sabres who had plenty of time to prepare for this match up as their last outing was all the way back on Tuesday in an overtime loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs, but perhaps it was the long layoff that had them looking flat footed on this day.

As I stated the Flyers, in spite of the organizations serious goaltending troubles this season,  had a dominate performance over the Sabres eventually triumphing by a score of 6 - 2. The Flyers got a solid performance from most of their players in the line up and it was quite the statement game for the team from the city of brotherly love as they were without forward Sean Couturier on the day. The loss of Couturier could prove to be of great significance to the Flyers but thankfully they were able to respond to his first game out of the line up with a big win. 

That being said though the highlight of the game came in the dying moments of the 3rd period when the aforementioned Nathan Beaulieu squared up with notorious Philadelphia Flyers enforcer Radko Gudas. Now normally you would expect there to be a fairly good scrap between these two big boys and if you had asked me to pick a winner before seeing the outcome of this fight I likely would have leaned towards Gudas. I would have been completely wrong however as this was a contest that apeared to be entirely dominated by the 26 year old Sabres blue liner. 

Beaulieu managed to get Gudas' helmet off pretty early during the exchange and began to rain heavy punches down onto Gudas' head, with almost no response coming from the Flyers big man. In fact by the time it was all said and done Beaulieu seemed none the worse for wear but Gudas was sporting a cut near his left eye from the punishment Beaulieu handed out.

Gudas should be thankful the NHL officials stepped in to save him on this one.

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