The Buffalo Sabres got off to a slow start on Tuesday night at Scotiabank Arena, which resulted in the Toronto Maple Leafs scoring the games's first three goals. Buffalo made things interesting in the third period, closing the gap to 4-3 with less than three minutes remaining, but ended up falling short by a 5-3 score.
Buffalo has played much better hockey as of late, and Tuesday night was a bit of a surprise factoring in the recent success of the team. In the month of December, the Sabres have gone 4-2-2, earning 10 out of a possible 16 points, and currently sit alone in second place in the Atlantic Division with 39 points. Over the last 13 games, Buffalo has earned at least a point in 10 of those games, going 6-3-4.
One player who has been a huge contributor to Buffalo's recent success is captain Jack Eichel.
The 23-year-old center is on pace for a career-year in the NHL, currently sitting with 24 goals and 26 assists for 50 points in the team's first 35 games of the season. Eichel is on pace to double his career-high total in goals (56), and is also on pace to eclipse the 100-point mark (117) for the first time in his career.
What's even more impressive is that Eichel is currently riding a career-high 17-game point streak, which is one game shy of tying the franchise record set by Hall of Famer Gilbert Perreault back in the 1971-72 season. In that span, Eichel has scored 16 goals and amassed 15 assists for 31 points.
Eichel has a chance to match Perreault's record on Thursday night when the Sabres are in Philadelphia to take on the Flyers at the Wells Fargo Center.
Aside from Eichel's like with Sam Reinhart and Victor Olofsson, the Sabres have found themselves in a familiar problem that they faced for the past couple of seasons - the team is not getting enough secondary scoring. Of the 110 goals scored so far this season, 50 of them have come off the stick of either Eichel (24), Olofsson (14) or Reinhart (12). The next leading scorer after those three is Jeff Skinner, who has 11 goals.
Sabres head coach Ralph Krueger took the time on Wednesday to join Howard Simon and Jeremy White for his weekly appearance on WGR. Krueger talked about the team's secondary scoring problems, as well as what happened in Tuesday night's loss in Toronto, the Buffalo Bills, and more.
Here is some of what he had to say:
Krueger on Tuesday night's performance against the Maple Leafs:
"We dug ourselves a hole, for sure. It was disappointing because we were off our game last night from the get-go and had trouble finding the principles that make us the best possible team. We were frustrated with that. What I liked was the reaction within the room after two periods and the conversations we had, and the fight in the third where with the 6-on-4 with two-and-a-half minutes to go had an opportunity to at least get a point out of that game, even though we had two off periods. Now it's back to the drawing board and getting the group regrouped for a better game tomorrow. We were disappointed with that loss last night, but let that adversity give us some lessons to take with us."
Krueger on his decision to pull the goalie on the power play late in Tuesday's loss in Toronto:
"It just depends on how much time is left in the game. We would be pulling our goalie irrelevant of a power play or not at about the 2:30 mark. In the old days, you'd used to wait until there was a minute to go, but that's just not enough time to get organized anymore with the way the pace of the game is. You take that risk if you have control, so on that situation last night we felt extremely comfortable. We ended up with an unfortunate turnover after actually getting set up in the zone, but you need to take risks down the stretch when you're down goals in the NHL today. That man advantage usually has been effective for us. We've scored a lot of goals with the goalies out, and yesterday we took it on the chin. But I would make that same decision again today looking at the circumstances that we had."
Krueger on the need to find secondary scoring in the lineup:
"The positive is you have a line like the Eichel line firing on all cylinders as it is. It is certainly one of, if not, the best line in the National Hockey League right now, but we need to get secondary scoring going here. It needs to alleviate some of the 5-on-5 pressure. The opposition is throwing their top [defenders] and top forward lines at Jack and Sam and [Victor Olofsson] here on every road game, and we need to have more pressure there. What we do is we're working with different combinations trying to find ones that will fire and ones that will go for us. We don't need another line scoring at that pace, but we definitely need there to be a threat."
Krueger on the lack of scoring from Jeff Skinner:
"He's been in and out of playing on the first unit, so power play goals aren't really a good measurement. He's getting his opportunities. There's a lot of shots on net. He's getting three to five shots in multiple games here, and he is a streaky scorer. Let's hope in [Philadelphia] that it breaks and he runs a streak here again, but offensively there's a lot of things going right for him."
Krueger on the improved play of Rasmus Dahlin:
"We feel actually that the break did him good so far as watching some games from the outside and being able to see where his positional play without the puck needs to be, and we feel he's come back very strong. He's adding to our offense, our power play is definitely stronger now with Rasmus back into the lineup. With Dahlin, it's an age where the biggest growth with him is going to happen without the puck defensively, and we can see that he's seeing his position better all the time. He's reading the game better all the time, and we're really pleased with him since he came back from the injury."
Krueger on sending Casey Mittelstadt down to the Rochester Americans:
"It's all about him getting reps at a higher level. His ice time has been reduced here as of late, and then being a healthy scratch got everybody thinking about the need for Casey, at this point in his development, to get repetitions and to be able to quarterback a power play the way he can and to play hard minutes 5-on-5 to work on the habits he needs [to work on]."
Krueger on his relationship with Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott:
"The goal that Sean and I have in common is to make the fan base in Buffalo, for sports, proud of what we're doing. We communicated about that this summer and he's written me that a few times, and all I can share is that it's a very natural friendship that's growing. I'm just really a big fan of the Bills and what they're doing there and how they're doing it, and it feels like vice versa. They like what we're doing. It's good to see some Bills players at games and our players love to go there. The relationship beginning with our owners' passion for sports in Buffalo and getting the sports scene back on track is carried by Sean and myself in the same way. We're just working hard every day to try to do that, and I'm just very, very excited for the Bills [since] they made the playoffs and we're going to be cheering loud for them."
You can listen to the entire interview below:
