The Buffalo Sabres have reached the exact halfway point of their season after a 6-4 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday night at KeyBank Center. It marked the fourth straight loss for the team as they hit the end of the 2019 calendar year.
It has been a roller coaster ride through the first three months of the year with several peaks and valleys over Ralph Krueger’s first 41 games as head coach. Tuesday followed that theme with the team jumping out to a 4-1 lead, only for Tampa Bay to score five unanswered goals.
Consistency is something every team strives for, no matter if you play for Krueger or Jon Cooper, who has 546 games behind the bench for Tampa Bay in his eighth season.
Consistent play from Game 1 to 82 has evaded the blue and gold for quite some time and is one of the reasons they have not made the postseason in recent years. However, Jack Eichel has seen growth for himself and teammates since the start of the 2019-20 season.
The Sabres captain thinks, “we’re starting to establish the way we want to play more and more every night, and we’re consistent to it and I think that should really help us in the second half of the year.” For the first two periods, Buffalo looked like the better team. But a Marcus Johansson hooking penalty seemed to give the visitors the life that they needed.
Eichel scored one the prettiest goals you will see for his first career shorthanded goal. He led a two-on-one chance on the penalty kill, deked between a Lightning defenseman and used the back hand to beat Andrei Vasilevskiy for the goal that made it 4-1 Buffalo.
Krueger has talked a lot recently about how important special teams are to Buffalo’s overall success in 5-on-5 play. Jake McCabe has liked the team’s even strength play despite mixed results on special teams. McCabe offered that the team’s “5-on-5 play has been great. We emphasize a lot on our defensive play and our play away from the puck, and I think that’s evident a lot of times on our nights that we’ve been playing as of late.” Over the first two periods, the team was supplying most of the offense 5-on-5 with three of their goals coming at even strength.
The alternate captain continued that “when that starts slipping, I think our game starts slipping, so that’s kind of our foundation is of our game is our back pressure away form the puck and our good gaps in the neutral zone and just our neutral zone play in general sets us up for a good game.” This was evident as the Lightning worked their way back into the game with strong even strength play after a power play goal.
Buffalo seemed to be in complete control of the game up until Johansson’s hooking minor that was called with about six minutes to go in the middle frame. Tampa Bay scored on the ensuing power play and again three minutes later to cut a three-goal deficit down to one, 4-3, before the end of the period.
Sometimes bounces tend to go one way or another due to effort, and that appeared to be the case for Tampa Bay in the third. Kevin Shattenkirk was the victim of Eichel’s shorthanded goal in the second, but had a shot from the slot go off of a Sabre and change direction before going in the net to tie the game at 4-4. The Lightning were in control of the game at that time and had the bounce go their way. They would not let go of it for the rest of the night.
Alex Killorn’s second goal of the game came just over eight minutes into the final frame and seemed to stun almost everyone in the building. Despite a pair of power plays late in regulation, the blue and gold failed to get the game-tying goal and suffered the defeat.