Penalties once again were the story for the Buffalo Sabres in their 5-2 loss to the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday night at KeyBank Center. More specifically, their lack of killing off their penalties helped lead to the loss out of their 10-day break.
It was predictable that Buffalo would need the first 10 minutes of the game to find their legs, just as head coach Ralph Krueger had mentioned leading up to Tuesday’s game. However, the team could not afford to take a penalty just about two minutes into the first period. Jean-Gabriel Pageau gave Ottawa the early lead with a tap-in goal with about 11 seconds to go on the man advantage, and the task became that much more difficult to overcome.
The bench boss thought that the team, “took four offensive zone penalties. [That was> unacceptable and their power play just killed us.” Krueger continued that he, “thought 5-on-5 [in the> first 10 minutes, we had the expected lull, and we had difficulty finding our legs. And then, for some strange reason, once we found them, we kept going in and out of the game.” At one point, the blue and gold were outshot 7-0 in the opening 20 minutes, but as the period went on, you could see the team skating better and catching Ottawa on their heels.
Sam Reinhart found the puck on his stick thanks to a blind pass by Senators defenseman Ron Hainsey and tied the score 1-1. The unassisted goal came with Mike Reilly in the penalty box for Ottawa.
The first even strength goal of the night came courtesy of the captain, once again, evening the score up. Jack Eichel was able to clean up a loose puck opportunity after Craig Anderson could not control the rebound. Keeping it simple and putting the puck on net worked for the Sabres to tie the score at 2-2 on just their third shot of the period.
Six different skaters had two shots on goal for Buffalo of the team’s 15 shots on goal through 40 minutes. Jeff Skinner recorded 17 shifts in the first two periods as well, but did not have shot on goal. His best chance of the night came on a 2-on-1 with Michael Frolik in the middle frame. Skinner used a saucer pass to get the puck across the ice, but Frolik could not capitalize with a bouncing puck.
Krueger was asked about Skinner’s usage late in the game. He thought that the coaches, “did push him into some pretty good minutes for not having played for quite a stretch here…you can ask those questions when you lose the game, would you do things differently? I don’t know at the moment. It felt like the right thing to do and it didn’t work, so I’ll take that.” Skinner had 18:33 of ice time in the game, fourth most of any Sabres forward in the loss.
A Frolik penalty in the third ended up being the penalty that the blue and gold could not overcome. Reilly’s first goal of the season came less than a minute into the Ottawa man advantage and was the first of three unanswered goals.
Two empty net goals, including Mark Borowiecki’s shorthanded goal with just over two minutes left in regulation, stopped any comeback threat the Sabres were trying to mount, and Nikita Zaitsev’s first goal of the year came with six seconds remaining in the game to cap it off at 5-2.
Buffalo has a day to hit the practice ice on Wednesday before welcoming the Montreal Canadiens to downtown Buffalo, the second of three home games this week out of the bye week.