(WGR Sports Radio 550) - The Buffalo Sabres didn’t play a bad game against the top team in the National Hockey League on Saturday, but they couldn’t win some of those 1-percenters that head coach Lindy Ruff talks about.
It eventually spelled a 4-2 loss to the Washington Capitals.
Buffalo entered the third period tied at 2-2, and didn’t fall behind until the 11:05 mark. Washington is a team that defends very well, and Buffalo didn’t battle hard enough to get through that and get more than five shots in the period.
Many of the same things happened that have been happening all season.
Zach Benson takes a bad penalty in the offensive zone, which he often does, and Washington scored its second power play goal of the game. It killed Buffalo because on their 3:16 of power play time, they were awful.
Buffalo had 57 shot attempts on Saturday, but only 21 hit the net.
During their nine-game losing streak, Buffalo had six one-goal losses, and this loss was one goal until the empty netter. I’ve never seen a team miss the net (18 times on Saturday) and hit as many posts as this one does.
You can only imagine how many more points the Sabres would have if they could hit the net regularly on many of their Grade-A scoring chances.
There wasn’t much going for the Sabres in the third period, but Buffalo had two great chances on Capitals goalie Logan Thompson.
On the first, Tage Thompson put a great move to the backhand and had a wide-open net, but the puck slid away from him as he went to shoot. Later, the Sabres stole the puck and Jason Zucker was wide-open at the crease, but backhanded the puck over the net.
On the game-winning goal by Dylan Strome, Zucker and Jordan Greenway got mesmerized by John Carlson at the right point, which allowed Strome to go to the net untouched. He easily directed Carlson’s pass past Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, who had another stellar game.
It’s just another wasted goaltender performance, because this team can’t score goals.
In the second period, Ruff put Tage Thompson with Jiri Kulich and Benson and it worked. Thompson and Benson won battles along the wall, and then Benson went to the net with Kulich.
Bo Byram took a pass from Thompson, had the shooting lane, and Kulich tipped in his fourth of the season. That line was the only line that could get in on the forecheck to win some battles.
I didn’t see a team that was scared or afraid to handle the puck like we’ve seen at times this season. It was just a team that couldn’t find a way to beat a team that was defending extremely well, with the Sabres unable to figure out how to solve it.
Play pretty well, but take bad penalties, lose the special teams battle, badly miss the net all night long against a team that’s quite a bit better than you, that will almost always add up to a loss.
One note from the game: It was nice to see Dylan Cozens immediately come to Ryan Johnson’s aid and fight Martin Fehervary.
Related
The Sabres head to Toronto to play the Maple Leafs on Sunday.
The playoff race is quickly getting away from Buffalo, as it’s taken the team exactly three weeks to go from third in the Atlantic Division to 15th in the Eastern Conference.
Toronto will also have to deal with a back-to-back with travel, as the Leafs lost in Detroit to the Red Wings on Saturday, 4-2.
Join Brian Koziol, Pat Malacaro and myself for pregame coverage on WGR starting at 4 p.m. EST on The Bet 1520.