Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550/WBEN) – The Buffalo Sabres' 3-0 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday is pretty easy to assess.
The Sabres had chance-after-chance-after-chance on Ilya Samsonov, but they let him be the first Leafs goaltender since Andrew Raycroft in 2007 to get a shutout in Buffalo.
The Sabres got 34 shots on goal, but they missed the net 15 times.
JJ Peterka missed the net on four of those chances, and also hit a post in the loss. One of his misses came when Alex Tuch set him up on the power play, and he had half a wide-open net and missed badly.
In the third period, where Buffalo outshot Toronto, 16-8, Samsonov stopped Dylan Cozens on a shorthanded breakaway. Then when Jeff Skinner came out of the penalty box, he stopped him coming in all alone, followed by a stop on Cozens off the rebound that looked like a sure goal.
Cozens has gone from 31 goals last season to 15 this year, and he’s to the point where he has a lot to work on in the offseason. He said during his postgame comments on Saturday that he knows, himself, what he’s capable of.
The biggest reason this was a 2-0 game for most of the contest was Buffalo went 0-for-6 on the power play.
In their last seven games, the Sabres are 0-for-18 with the man advantage. They did not have an attempt on the power play on Friday against the New Jersey Devils, a game in which they won 5-2.
The Sabres had quite a bit of zone time on Saturday, but they were reluctant to shoot and passed it a lot around the perimeter. They rarely got the puck or any bodies inside the Toronto box.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen was better in this game, as he made some sensational saves. However, the first two goals that beat him by John Tavares and Nick Robertson were unscreened shots from the slot. They certainly aren’t easy saves, and even if he did stop them, we’re talking about a 1-0 loss anyway. But those are saves that he’s been making on a consistent basis lately.
Luukkonen stopped Auston Matthews on a partial third period breakaway, but Matthews stayed at the crease and gathered a rebound from a Conor Timmons shot for his 60th goal of the season. Bo Byram had broken his stick and without it, he wasn’t able to defend Matthews the way he would’ve liked to.
It is inexcusable for the Leafs to come to Buffalo and have a home game. At least 80% of the building was wearing Leafs jerseys and cheering for Toronto.
This organization has to figure out how to stop other teams' fans from invading this building. It starts by becoming a relevant team in the NHL, and they aren’t even close.
That would take making the playoffs and actually being a team that competes from Game 1 of the season. This team is not even a shadow of that.
This has nothing to do with booing or chanting for head coach Don Granato to be fired. This has to do with the Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins taking over this building.
It looked like last summer this team was on its way, but it was just a false alarm. We’ve seen a lot of that since players like Ryan Miller, Daniel Briere and Chris Drury left Buffalo.
Related
