Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) – The Buffalo Sabres are to the point where they need to play well, and play well often.
At times during their six-game homestand, they did play well, but the bottom line is they were 3-3-0 on the stand. That isn’t remotely good enough.
Casey Mittelstadt and Alex Tuch turned the puck over on Saturday, and just 7:06 into the game, they were down 2-0 to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
There was still 52:54 left to go, so that shouldn’t have been the dagger, because Jonas Johansson was in goal for the Lightning instead of Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Buffalo spent two periods trying to skate through the Lightning instead of getting pucks deep, and they only had 12 shots and one goal after two periods.
Johansson did stop 15 third period shots, but he was able to see most of the shots and didn’t face much pressure from the Sabres around the net or the slot.
The one time Buffalo got into the zone and pressured, it turned into a Dylan Cozens goal.
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This was a huge game for Buffalo, because they started the day seven points back of Tampa Bay and the Detroit Red Wings, who held the two Wild Card positions in the Eastern Conference. A regulation win would’ve put them five points behind both teams, but they weren’t up for the task.
That has been said too many times this season.
This was a very winnable game, as all they had to do was score three goals on Jonas Johansson.
Same can be said with one other loss on this homestand last Saturday when the Vancouver Canucks beat the Sabres, 1-0. All they needed was two goals, but Thatcher Demko, who is an All-Star goalie this season, slammed the door. Buffalo had many good scoring opportunities, but great saves, posts and shots wide of the net spelled another loss when they played an excellent game.
Buffalo had won 5-of-7 games coming into Saturday, but the game against the Lightning, once again, showed there’s no reason to believe anything is going to change from what we’ve seen this year.
Many want to blame goaltending, but that has not been a problem this season. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen has only given up three goals in the last four games, and the Sabres are 2-2-0.
This is a broken team, but until the people running this team come to that conclusion, nothing will change.
