(WGR 550/WBEN) – The Buffalo Sabres final road trip of the season was nothing to be proud of as they went 0-2-1 and looked nothing like the team we’ve seen the past few months.
Lindy Ruff talks about this season giving out Christmas gifts, at times and in the last 40 minutes of the 7-4 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday, the gifts were as generous as you possibly could be.
In the first period for probably about 15 minutes, Buffalo was the better team. Jack Quinn beat Jonas Johansson clean and hit the crossbar and Alex Tuch also beat him and hit the post. The Sabres were hard on the forecheck, caused numerous turnovers and it paid off with two goals in 14.4 seconds at 19:37 and 19:50.
Here’s where the hard work came in. Both Zach Benson and Tage Thompson go behind the net and win the battle, Thompson finds Jiri Kulich with a cross crease pass for a tap-in for his first goal in nine games. The Sabres got in the zone right away and Quinn made a beautiful play with Peyton Krebs and Connor Clifton going to the net and he got it to Clifton for his first goal of the season.
That was the Sabres team we’ve seen for six or seven weeks. Then the team that had horrific losses to the Colorado Avalanche put on the Sabres jerseys on and next thing you knew, Tampa Bay had four second period goals. We saw no awareness, horrendous puck decisions, no compete, no intensity and no battle.
With the score tied 2-2, Jacob Bryson who had two excellent defensive plays in the first period jumped into the zone and fanned on his shot. That sent away the NHL’s leading scorer Nikita Kucherov who easily embarrassed Tuch, was stopped by James Reimer but had the time to easily score on the rebound.
Brandon Hagel was left open to hit the post twice before Clifton turned it over behind the net. There was a smorgasbord of Lightning players open in front but the guy just called up from the Syracuse Crunch, Conor Geekie got one shot and then was still standing by himself to get another to score. The two other goals were deflected in off of Benson and Mattias Samuelsson.
Early in the third, Ryan McLeod decided to send a blind backhand pass right to Kucherov alone in front of the net and he made no mistake. There’s just never a reason to put a blind backhand pass to the slot.
Buffalo finally went on the power play and for the second straight game scored a 5-on-3 goal when Tuch tipped a pass/shot by Dahlin for his 35th of the season. The gifting hadn’t ended yet because Guentzel was left all alone in front of the net once again and the NHL’s leading scorer gave him a perfect pass for a power play goal to make the final score 7-4. In three games this season against Buffalo the former Pittsburgh Penguin scored five goals. Kucherov had two goals and four assists for six points.
Yes, Reimer gave up seven goals, but he also made numerous spectacular saves. His team absolutely hung him out to dry.
Buffalo finished the season 13-25-4 away from Western New York which is 28th in the NHL.
The Sabres got no goals and one assist from Thompson on the trip, but on the other hand they got two goals and four assists for six points out of their captain.
Buffalo has Monday off and then has home games on Tuesday against the Toronto Maple Leafs and Thursday vs the Philadelphia Flyers before the season ends.