(WGR 550) – There were pockets of the game on Monday where the Buffalo Sabres played with a decent pace, but for the most part, they spent most of the game in their own end trying to help out Dustin Tokarski and not enough time attacking in five-man units on New York Rangers goalie Keith Kinkaid.
Tokarski played 56:23 in this game after Rasmus Ristolainen pushed Julien Gauthier into Carter Hutton, forcing him to leave at the 2:53 mark. The veteran goaltender hadn’t played an NHL game since Oct. 28, 2016 and couldn’t be blamed for any of the four goals scored on him.
Give Buffalo credit, they scored two goals in the first 4:22 of the third period to tie the game at 3-3. However, the penalty killing let them down again on the night, giving up two goals to Chris Kreider, with the last coming just 1:25 after Jeff Skinner had knotted the game.
Buffalo had just two shots on goal 12 minutes into the third and they both went in. Don Granato praised his team for improvement, and yes, there were pockets of pace, but you can’t be happy when you get very little offensive zone time and give up 40 shots, while having only 42 shot attempts of your own.
I just can’t sit here and say they played well when they were outshot, 40-19. By period, Buffalo had five, eight and six shots. That isn’t even in the stratosphere of good enough.
Of Buffalo’s 19 shots, Skinner had six of them. He was dangerous all night long, and his linemates set him up for a breakaway and a wide-open one-timer just a few seconds apart, but Kinkaid was fabulous to rob him on both attempts.
Another positive was Dylan Cozens, who netted his fourth goal of the season in his first game back after suffering a concussion. Cozens is on a 16-goal pace over 82 games as a rookie.
The Sabres were still very weak on battles in the defensive zone, leading to goals.
They also were confused on coverages, as the Rangers did very well with attacking in five-man units. Granato has a very good teaching tool by showing his team how the Rangers played this game.
Buffalo is now winless in 14 games, going 0-12-2 in this stretch. They’re 0-6-1 in their last seven road games, and have dropped to 1-2-1 this season against the "Blue Shirts."
Buffalo has two games in Pittsburgh against the Penguins on Wednesday and Thursday, before heading to Boston to face the Bruins for a Saturday afternoon game.
