It was strange attending the Buffalo Sabres' season opener against the Washington Capitals at KeyBank Center. Buffalo certainly looked like a team that hadn’t played a game in 10 months, but I’ll get to that later.
Western New York native Cami Clune made her hometown proud when she appeared on "The Voice" this fall, and she couldn’t even be in the building to sing the anthems. Instead, they filmed it outside, and it’s a shame the fans weren’t there to see it. She was phenomenal.
The arena had piped-in crowd noise that’s extremely annoying, but they’re not doing it for me or the media. It’s done for radio and TV.
Another thing that was very strange was when goals were scored. There’s no noise other than from the players, and you almost had to do a double take to make sure there was a goal.
I thought as the game went on, I would get used to not having fans, but I really didn’t. The Sabres were pretty lucky there weren’t fans, because they would’ve heard a lot of booing in route to a 6-4 loss.
The Sabres looked as rusty as you could possibly look after 10 months off and no preseason games. Washington got on the Sabres at every turn, taking away their space and controlling the puck.
Buffalo couldn’t get the puck away from the line of Nicklas Backstrom, Alex Ovechkin and T.J. Oshie and they totaled seven points.
The Sabres had some awful turnovers led by Jack Eichel’s line.
On Washington’s third goal, Eichel came through center ice and turned the puck over just inside the blue line. The Buffalo defense was right in thinking that was a good time to change, but Capitals defenseman John Carlson came the other way, and there was no way Colin Miller or Henri Jokiharju could get back into the play from the bench. Carlson walked in on Carter Hutton alone and Washington had a two-goal lead.
Buffalo played a good third period, and started it well when Jake McCabe ripped a one-timer from the right point that pulled the Sabres to within a goal just 20 seconds in. It looked, to me, like Taylor Hall tipped it in front, but that doesn’t matter.
The Sabres acquired Eric Staal to provide a calming veteran presence in situations like this, but just 26 second later, Staal was stripped of the puck in front of Hutton and Jakub Vrana made no mistake. That gave Washington its two-goal lead back again.
With just 1:54 left, Krueger pulled Hutton and put five forwards and a defenseman out there and sure enough, Victor Olofsson scored to make it 5-4. Just 51 seconds later, Garnet Hathaway scored the empty-netter and Buffalo lost.
That’s two different times that the Sabres couldn’t hold the momentum. Did not having fans there matter?
In the third period, Staal was hit in the head by a Nic Dowd check and had to leave the game. That likely will leave a hole at center for the rematch on Friday night.
In my mind, Dowd should be suspended, and Krueger was understandably upset Dowd didn’t get a major penalty.
Dylan Cozens played his first NHL game on the right wing with Tobias Rieder and Cody Eakin. When Staal got hurt, Cozens took a few shifts at center and didn’t look bad.
I know they want to bring him along slowly, but if Staal can’t play, it might not be a bad idea to let Cozens play center, which is his natural position. I think I’d like that better than bringing Casey Mittelstadt up from the taxi squad.
Cozens registered his first-career point with an assist in the second period, while also picking up a hit and a shot on goal in 12:09 of total ice-time.
I know Hall had a goal and an assist, and Eichel had two assists with Tage Thompson picking up one helper, but that line did not play well and it has to be changed. I think I’d put Olofsson back with Eichel on right wing and let Cozens center Jeff Skinner and Thompson. If Kyle Okposo is ready to play, I might even consider him instead of Thompson.
Hutton made 22 saves on 27 shots faced in the loss, with the plan likely to use Linus Ullmark on Friday.
I think what should bother the Sabres the most is Washington goalie Ilya Samsonov was shaky. The Sabres had four shots on him through most of the first period with one by Eichel trying to finish a 2-on-1 rush. Samsonov was actually falling over when Hall made the prefect pass to Eichel, who basically hit the goaltender with the puck.
It was one of the few chances Eichel had all night.
The good news in this game is Buffalo did score a power play goal by Hall, going 1-for-3 overall on the night. The bad news is the penalty killing gave up one goal on just two attempts.
Buffalo’s penalty killers were Eakin, Curtis Lazar, Rieder and Riley Sheahan up front, with McCabe, Rasmus Ristolainen, Jokiharju and Brandon Montour on defense. Lazar and Sheahan both had chances to score a shorthanded goal.
Buffalo started to get a little more in sync in the third period, out-shooting the Capitals, 9-5. If I’m being honest with you, I didn’t like three of the team’s four lines. The only one that was OK was Cozens, Rieder and Eakin.
Krueger used the same three pairs on defense all through training camp, and they weren’t very good in this game at all. I think it was short-sighted not to try some different things, especially in the scrimmages.
Ristolainen picked up right where he left off last season, and I don’t get why Krueger is such a fan of his. Once again, in the first 40 minutes, his defensive zone coverages were horrendous.
With back-to-back games, we’ll have to see if the Sabres can pick up where they left off in the third period. Losing back-to-back games to Washington to start the season would, in my mind, be an early disaster for this team.
