St. Louis, MO (WGR 550) – I’m not going to lie, I don’t know quite what to say about the Buffalo Sabres' 6-4 loss on Thursday to the St. Louis Blues.
Offensively, the Sabres absolutely dominated. They rolled four lines and each one of them would get a cycle going in the offensive zone for minutes and minutes.
The Blues couldn’t handle the line of Jordan Greenway, Peyton Krebs and Kyle Okposo. They caused numerous turnovers by the Blues, keeping pressure on goalie Jordan Binnington.
Buffalo found themselves down 3-0 in the first period, despite outshooting the Blues, 15-8.
This wasn’t Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen’s best game, as for the first time all season, he had trouble making a big save and gave up a few you’d like him to have.
The team also coughed the puck up at inopportune times, giving the Blues great chances, which they capitalized on every time.
After it was 3-0, the Krebs line went to work and got the puck back to Rasmus Dahlin, who got one of the goals back. Having Greenway at the net also paid off.
The Sabres don’t win many faceoffs, but Dylan Cozens did right back to Zach Benson, who spun and scored his second goal of the year.
By 10:53 of the second period, the three-goal comeback was complete.
It was another great forecheck by the Krebs line, and Krebs scored his first of the season and registered his second point on the game.
There was one problem: The Sabres seemed to take a breath and in 24 seconds, Mattias Samuelsson turned the puck over and gave the Blues a layup. Right after that, the whole team lost coverage and it was 5-3, Blues.
The Sabres had 15 shots in the first period, 16 in the second, and another 15 in the third for 46 shots. All that is fine and good, but the bottom line is the Blues were absolutely terrible, yet, Buffalo gave them six goals and the Sabres came away with no points.
If you catch a team playing that poorly, you just have to get two points out of the game.
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Buffalo lost by two, and Alex Tuch, JJ Peterka and Casey Mittelstadt all missed clear cut breakaways. Mittelstadt was set up for a wide-open tap-in goal with Binnington nowhere to be found, and flubbed the puck going wide.
Cozens was off the post with Binnington, again, way out of the net, but the puck was waist high and he couldn't knock it down to his stick to tap it in.
That’s five opportunities that all should’ve wound up in the net.
There was another one on the first shift of the game when Dahlin hit Mittelstadt with a stretch pass. He set up Skinner coming alone down the slot, and Skinner misfired and didn’t get a shot off. Skinner scores quite a few goals from that spot, so you have to think there would’ve been a good chance that he’d bury it.
In the end, this was just another missed opportunity, which has been happening a lot to this team in the first 23 games of the season.
