Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR) - The Buffalo Sabres followed the same old script on home ice Wednesday against the Tampa Bay Lightning: Come out flying, get five Grade-A scoring opportunities that get turned away, then revert back to dumb mistake after dumb mistake after dumb mistake.
That formula culminated in an 8-3 throttling at the hands of the visitors.
Buffalo is now 2-6-0 in their last eight home games. If you want to add in last year's playoffs, the Sabres have won just six of their last 17 home contests.
Buffalo played a good 17 minutes to open the game, as Tage Thompson and Zach Benson both had two phenomenal chances, and Jack Quinn had one in the slot on the power play.
As it's gone for most of the season, though, they wasted that, and seemed to forget how to play hockey for 49 seconds near the end of the first period. That made them chase the game for the rest of the night.
Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff was livid after the game.
"In the last two minutes, we got a D involved that shouldn't have been involved (Conor Timmins) and gave them life," said Ruff following the loss.
Just 49 seconds later on a power play, both Timmins and Mattias Samuelsson covered Sam O'Reilly, who was playing in his first NHL game in front of the net, allowing a clear path for defenseman John Carlson to get to the backside off the post for a tap-in goal.
Carlson finished the game with a goal and four assists for five points.
Ruff felt the Sabres should've just stuck to their game, and even though they missed great opportunities again, go into the intermission 0-0. Instead, it was 2-0,
"We needed to just stay patient. We joined and gave them an odd-numbered rush. We beat ourselves," Ruff said.
"This isn't who we are. We worked really hard at staying away from those situations, and if you look at the recent losses, we made that mistake that cost us, different individuals."
Ruff just got angry enough that he ended his press conference with this:
"You can blame the defense, but the defensive structure broke down. Sometimes that's a forward that has to fill, which we got so good at sometimes it's a defenseman. And I'm not going to get into the details on who broke down on what play. We weren't good as a group, and we're moving on and playing Chicago tomorrow."
To start the second period, Timmins blocked a shot and then dropped the puck right in front of goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. That gave Lightning winger Brandon Hagel an easy goal.
Hagel had two goals and an assist in the win, giving him 22 points in 16 games against the Sabres.
Buffalo drafted Hagel in the sixth round of the 2016 NHL Draft. At the junior level with the Red Deer Rebels of the Western Hockey League, he scored 18 goals and 41 assists for 59 points in 56 games. The general manager at the time, Jason Botterill, decided not to sign Hagel to an entry-level contract, allowing the Chicago Blackhawks to sign him as a free agent.
Hagel then proceeded to net 41 goals and 61 assists for 102 points in 66 games with the Rebels in his final year of junior hockey.
Over his 464 career games in the NHL with the Blackhawks and Lightning, the 28-year-old now has 172 goals and 220 assists for 392 points. This includes three seasons in Tampa Bay in which Hagel has netted 30-goal campaigns.
So far this season, Hagel is on pace for 51 goals in a full 84-game slate.
After Yanni Gourde was gifted a layup after another half-hearted backcheck to make it 4-0, Tampa Bay, Buffalo's second power play unit finally got some time on the ice and came through when Josh Doan went to the crease and steered Ryan McLeod's pass into the net.
Just 3:38 later, Quinn led a 3-on-2 that Jason Zucker finished off to make it 4-2 heading into the locker room.
Then just 33 seconds into the third period, Tage Thompson beat Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy from the right circle to cut the Sabres' deficit to a goal.
On the next shift. the Sabres almost scored the tying goal, but pushed too hard and the mistake was a killer.
Just 52 seconds after Thompson scored, both Owen Power and Olen Zellweger pinched into the zone, giving Buffalo all five players below the dots. It was Hagel who killed them again, as he sent an outlet pass to Nikita Kucherov, who was off to the races and put a backhand past Luukkonen.
It's a breakaway from an extremely talented offensive player, but if you want to be a really good goalie, you have to bail your team out and make a huge save there. Luukkonen didn't.
Ruff bottom lined it and felt nine saves on 14 shots in 41:25 of work isn't good enough. He then put Colten Ellis in, who wasn't ready to jump in cold like that.
In the 18:32 of work he played, Ellis made five saves on eight shots faced.
In 44 games against the Sabres, Kucherov has 26 goals and 34 assists for 60 points. That now includes his three goals scored Wednesday - a natural third-period hat-trick - as well as an assist for a four-point outing.
If the Sabres want to look at a positive, they've won three-straight games on the road, and have points in seven-consecutive games away from home ice, going 4-0-3.
There was no morning skate Thursday, so we don't know if Ruff is going to stay with his goaltending rotation and start Ellis.
The 26-year-old is 3-3-0 this season with a 3.39 goals-against average and an .873 save percentage.
At this point, anything is possible with Buffalo's goaltending. If Alex Lyon is ready to return from injury, they could activate him and start him Thursday.
Buffalo is now 11th in the Eastern Conference with a points percentage of .528. The Washington Capitals have the eighth and final playoff spot at .625. The Sabres are 20th overall in the NHL.
Meanwhile, Chicago is 31st in the NHL with a points percentage of .250. The Blackhawks have lost six in-a-row and 9-of-10.
Spencer Knight is 4-10-0 in goal for the Blackhawks with a 3.66 goals-against average and an .881 save percentage.
Despite missing six games at the start of the year, Blackhawks captain Connor Bedard is their leading scorer with five goals and nine assists for 14 points in 12 games.
The Sabres beat Chicago back in October, 4-3, on Buffalo's home opening night. The Sabres had to overcome a 2-0 and 3-2 deficit to win.
Rasmus Dahlin scored at 6:10 of the third period to tie the game, and Jiri Kulich scored at 13:20 of the period to win it.
Dahlin, by the way, only has five 5-on-5 points this season. Samuelsson has nine points, while Power has eight and Zellweger has six.
It's just another indicator of how poorly Dahlin has been playing this season.
Join Zach Jones and Derek Kramer for pregame coverage on WGR starting at 7 p.m. EST when you'll hear from Ruff and one of the players.
