Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) - Honestly, it’s amazing the Buffalo Sabres still have a chance to tie their best of seven series with the Canadiens when Game 6 is played in Montreal on Saturday. Montreal’s best players have severely outplayed Buffalo’s best players, the Sabres penalty killing has been wildly inconsistent killing just 72.7% in the five games. That would be a lot worse had they not killed 6-of-7 penalties to help them win Game 4.
In this series Nick Suzuki has three goals and three assists for six points and is minus-1. Tage Thompson has two goals and two assists for four points and is minus-9. Alex Tuch has no points and is minus-8. Juraj Slofkovsky has a goal and five assists for six points and is minus-3 while Cole Caufield has goals in three consecutive games and is minus-2. Rasmus Dahlin has one goal and three assists for four points and is minus-1 while Lane Hutson has no goals and six assists for six points and is plus-3.
The heat is absolutely on Buffalo’s best players because you can’t sustain success if your best players aren’t your best players. Lindy Ruff said,
“This is the time of year when you get the opportunity, you have to take advantage of it.
“You look at the big mistake we made, you give Caufield the backdoor empty netter and when a team makes a big mistake like that you need to take advantage of it.”
Josh Doan leads all scorers in the series with two goals and five assists for seven points.
On Friday, Ruff decided not to meet with the team and have them just go directly to the airport. Ruff wants them all to think about moving forward, not looking back,
“I know the pressure they’re feeling, I know how much they care, I just feel a day away from the rink not coming here is a good thing.
"We don’t need to watch video, we don’t need to talk about the game, we need to move on. There’s only one game that counts now and that is the game tomorrow and in all likelihood we may not even skate tomorrow. We’ll save everything we’ve got for tomorrow night.”
In Game 5 Buffalo sprinted out to a 3-2 first period lead which is exactly what the doctor ordered,
“It’s the start we wanted and then made a big mistake, (Conor Timmins passed the puck up the slot and put it in the skates of Josh Norris)” Ruff said.
“I thought we had them up against the wall to start with and we made a puck decision that wasn’t a good puck decision and we created some life and momentum for them.
“We’ve got to play to win, we can’t be afraid. What are there, five teams left? To be sitting here talking to you guys I think that it’s a wonderful place to be and I’ll tell the team the same thing, we get to go to Montreal for Game 6 in the middle of May to move on to a Game 7 and I think we’ll all be evaluated on what this game looks like, just bring your best.”
There was no question that for the first time all series, the Sabres had Jakub Dobes on the ropes in the first period scoring three goals on three shots. Ruff said they took their foot off the gas and it cost them,
“I did, we talked about it last night, we talked about it after the period, we thought we let him off the hook. We came out of the corner a couple of times and we had clear lanes to shoot pucks and we deferred to a better play and we’ve talked about this throughout the year that sometimes our ability to make plays we sometimes defer to that better play and we had the puck going to the net early and got rewarded for it, we just didn’t quite stay with it and probably there was four or five opportunities to get a puck there quicker that could’ve kept them in chaos.”
Owen Power was injured in Game 5, but did come back to play a little. Only the injured players came to the arena on Friday and Ruff said Power seemed to be doing better,
“He’s in right now getting treatment and he said he’s feeling pretty good, better than he thought he would feel, so that’s encouraging.”
With no practice, there were no indications of what Ruff may be thinking when it comes to changes.
Game 6 is in Montreal on Saturday
Game 6 is in Montreal on Saturday
