Las Vegas, Nev. (WGR Sports Radio 550/WBEN) - In Thursday’s loss to the Avalanche, Colorado’s best players - Nate MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Mikko Rantanen - all showed up big time to help their team erase a 3-0 deficit and beat the Buffalo Sabres in overtime.
In Saturday’s 3-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights, Jack Eichel and Mark Stone showed up big time and led their team to victory.
Where are the Sabres’ best players when they’re needed the most? Many times nowhere to be found.
It was another case of that against Vegas.
Buffalo needs their captain, Rasmus Dahlin, to play like a superstar on most nights to be a good team. He was just OK against Colorado, and nowhere to be found for the first 40 minutes against Vegas, where Buffalo trailed 2-0.
Dahlin got an assist on the Sabres’ 6-on-4 power play goal with just 2:18 left in the game, but he was on the ice for both Vegas goals in the first period, and was mostly ineffective in his 25:28 of work.
This wasn't what the team thought they were getting when they took Dahlin first overall in the 2018 NHL Draft.
The Sabres had four shots in the second period, and just 10 through 40 minutes. Buffalo had more offensive zone time in the first five minutes of the third period than they did in the first 40.
The only reason it was 2-0 was because James Reimer made numerous point-blank saves from wide-open opponents cruising the middle of the ice.
When I asked Dahlin how he could be better in that game, he felt it’s everything.
“Pucks to the net, stay in the middle, push harder, be more of a leader. You have to look at yourself in the mirror,” said Dahlin following the loss Saturday.
“We started too late. It just cannot happen in this league. You have to be ready the first whistle, and they rolled over us in the first period. And then we started playing good again, but too late. We have to be better. This is not acceptable.”
The problem is, I don’t think they’re capable of being better for more than a few games at a time.
I think we all could’ve predicted this response after what happened in Colorado, because we know this team has proven to be a mentally weak team.
Dahlin knows why they were better in the third period, when they had 14 shots on goal.
“We pushed,” he said. “Every time we don’t think and just play, with instincts, I mean the compete is the main thing, win battles. Keep it simple, win battles again, pucks manage. That’s the stuff that works, and we have to understand that’s what we have to do.”
That’s been the message to the players for two-and-a-half seasons, and they just aren’t good enough to do it on a regular basis.
This team has been talking about learning for most of that time, and it sounds like the captain is getting tired of it.
“We have to come to the realization that we can’t be a young team anymore. We have to learn these little things that all the vets know about, and we have to step up. We can’t do this,” Dahlin said.
Understandably, head coach Lindy Ruff got more-and-more agitated talking about that game as he went along during postgame.
“It’s you look at their puck play early on, we turn a puck over 2-on-5 (Peyton Krebs). I thought we came out first shift and got a great first opportunity, ‘Zucks’ [Jason Zucker] walks in alone (and missed the net), and you’ve got to follow that up with another good shift. We followed it up with just a terrible play that led to a goal against.”
The middle of the ice was wide-open for Vegas for 40 minutes of action.
“They were faster, they were quicker. We left them in the middle of the ice on two goals, and they haven’t done that in five games,” Ruff said. “Why they left, there’s no reason to leave the middle of the ice.”
In addition to Zucker missing the net, Tage Thompson and JJ Peterka were locked and loaded for two wide-open one-timers and neither hit the net.
At the end of a power play, Alex Tuch was open at the top of the crease, and the puck went off on a funny angle and he missed the net.
Buffalo had 62 shot attempts and only 24 hit the net. Meanwhile, 20 of those attempts went wide.
Peterka had eight attempts and hit the net twice, and was wide on five of them.
Thompson had 12 attempts, with five hitting the net.
Dahlin had nine attempts on goal with four going wide.
Dylan Cozens had six attempts on goal with two shots stopped by Vegas goalie Adin Hill.
Owen Power had five shot attempts with only one registering on goal.
Ruff was totally disgusted by that.
“We miss the net way too often,” he said. “We started the second period with a 2-on-1 a minute and 30 seconds in and we didn’t have a great first period. We got a chance right there, and an A+ chance that turned into nothing. That sums up our puck play. I thought our passing to start with, between our D and forwards, was poor. I thought theirs was spot on, and you end up chasing them around.”
The play Ruff was talking about was Tuch blocking a shot and taking off on a 2-on-1. He had a clean breakaway lane to Hill, and forced a pass to Jack Quinn, who was completely covered.
Reimer did everything he could, stopping 30-of-33 shots in the losing effort.
With the team traveling on Sunday and then hosting the Washington Capitals on Monday, they had to give Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen a day off.