Raleigh, N.C. (WGR Sports Radio 550) - Right from puck drop on Thursday, the Carolina Hurricanes dominated the Buffalo Sabres.
Four seconds into the game Jesperi Kotkaniemi fought Dylan Cozens and got the better of the battle and the crowd went into a frenzy.
You could see the two players were talking before the faceoff and Cozens explained what happened,
“It was his idea, he just asked me to go and I just didn’t really want to say no, so I let him.”
From that point until Alex Tuch scored his first power play goal of the season at 19:04 of the first period the Hurricanes showed they were out to break their losing skid that had hit five out of six games.
The Canes had been embarrassed in Montreal by the Canadiens 4-0 and in Toronto vs the Maple Leafs 6-3. Rod Brind’Amour is not the type of coach that is going to let his team get away with that and I don’t think Carolina could’ve been any better as their fans pushed them through or the Sabres could’ve been any worse.
On the first goal Jordan Staal was all by himself in front as Dennis Gilbert lost coverage and Jordan Martinook’s shot hit Staal in the skate on the way to Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen.
Just 1:48 later, Henri Jokiharju tried to rim the puck around the back wall to an open and available Bo Byram, but he muffed the pass and put it right on Mikko Rantanen’s stick. Sebastien Aho was also uncovered in front and it was 2-0. Lindy Ruff would've liked to have seen a big save there on Aho and he pulled Luukkonen who made five saves on seven shots in 7:57 of work. Since coming back from the break, Luukkonen seems to be over playing pucks as he comes across taking him past the net. It was a nagging problem when he was younger, but he had gotten it out of his game until recently. James Reimer took over, but just 1:07 after the goal, Zach Benson took the Sabres second tripping penalty in the offensive zone corner, and it took 37 seconds for Ryan McLeod to lose Rantanen in front of the net and it was 3-0.
Those penalties put Ruff in ill humor and Benson was benched for the rest of the period. Ruff was still upset after the game,
“Terrible penalty and we talked about it before the game, discipline has to be good and we take an O-zone penalty that cost us a goal and got the building even more involved.”
After that goal Reimer was fantastic making numerous huge saves to keep the Sabres in the game. Reimer played 50:57 and made 27 saves on 29 shots.
Buffalo was outshot 17-4, they turned the puck over all period and left guys wide open in the middle. Tuch’s goal did give them a chance.
Carolina didn’t score their fourth goal until 15:52 on the second period when Owen Power turned the puck over to Sean Walker who found Jack Roslovic alone in front with a 2-on-0. He made a slick backhand pass to former Sabre Taylor Hall who had a wide-open layup for his first goal as a Hurricane and 10th goal of the season.
The Sabres had plenty of chances to cut their deficit to just one goal before Hall scored. Bo Byram has really played well for a long period of time for the Sabres, but this game just didn’t go well for him. Buffalo had three 3-on-2 rushes in the period and Byram led two of them, but made bad passes on both. In 22:52 of playing time Byram was minus-3 with no shots on goal.
They also had two power plays, but with Jason Zucker nursing a foot injury and out of the lineup, things sputtered. Zucker leads Buffalo with 16 power play points and nine goals with the extra man. Ruff wouldn’t accept this as being a problem,
“No excuses, this isn’t about one guy, there was 18 guys on the ice and they were better than us,”
Early in the third period known Hurricanes hothead Andrei Svechnikov got punched in the head by Tage Thompson. No penalty was called and the Russian winger almost followed Thompson into the bench. He was so incensed he went straight for the closest Sabres who was Jack Quinn, Quinn took the hard hit to make a pass to McLeod who used his speed to create a 2-on-1 because Svechnikov took himself out of the play to make that hit. McLeod made a perfect pass to JJ Peterka for the layup goal and at 1:15, it was 4-2.
Pyotr Kochetkov made some key saves after that to keep it a two-goal game and then Thompson tried to skate through Seth Jarvis, but wound up giving him a breakaway on the open net to seal the game at 5-2. Buffalo is second in the NHL in empty net goals allowed with 18. The Colorado Avalanche have allowed 19. Both the Washington Capitals and Vegas Golden Knights have allowed five each.
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As far as what went wrong early Ruff said, “It started with competing, they beat us to pucks, we got to pucks and didn’t execute, a lot of pucks went off our stick and right to them and they were a lot stronger on the puck than we were.”
As I mentioned early after that fight the building and the Hurricanes were in an absolute frenzy. Ruff said there’s one way to stop that,
“You have to play better, and we didn’t compete at a high enough level, I mean their compete, they had just lost four games, they knew they had to turn the corner. They came guns a blazing and we didn’t answer.
“Our power play could’ve gotten us back into the hockey game and it didn’t even come close to executing.”
Tuch had five of Buffalo’s 16 shots on goal and eight of their 41 shot attempts. He said,
“They brought some energy right off the drop and I thought Cuzy did a really good job of answering the drop, I know that he was asked to go and he’s not one to back down, so props to him for sure and we should’ve responded better as a team.
“We knew they were going to come out with a lot of energy as a team and we needed to be better. I thought we got better as the game progressed, but we have to have a better start.”
Tuch didn’t want to hear about Cozens turning down that fight and not letting the crowd get crazy. He said that had nothing to do with it,
“We weren’t letting the crowd get into it, we knew they were going to get into it, we know what this building brings each and every night they play they bring the energy and that’s the type of style that they want to do. They want to be hard working, they want to roll it over and have momentum and we needed to at least match their energy, and we weren’t able to do that from the start and that was on us.”
Tuch also felt they were losing puck battles and not supporting well enough.
Despite the loss, Buffalo is still on pace to reach Ruff’s five-game goal of seven points. In this five-game segment they’re 2-1-0 with a home and home series coming up against the Montreal Canadiens. Buffalo must take 3-of-4 points to meet their coach’s goal.