Losing a 7-5 game to a Montréal Canadiens team that was on a six-game skid to end a three-game win streak is as maddening as it is inexcusable.
BUFFALO — After so many years watching and writing about hockey it’s easy to see patterns and other repetitive occurrences. It’s another thing to see things repeat themselves in the span of a couple weeks in the same way.
The Buffalo Sabres dropped a glorious mess of a game to the Montréal Canadiens at home 7-5. It was a game that saw all four goaltenders dressed for action take part in it and one where the lead changed repeatedly with goals scored in rapid succession all throughout it.
It was the kind of game that would give any coach agita. But in the Sabres’ case, it was another game that featured them playing an opponent that was down in a bad way while they were riding the high of a winning streak. It was the kind of game where the team that’s trending up is supposed to keep the one that’s reeling and fighting to figure things out down.
But for the second time in less than two weeks, the Sabres let a team take advantage to right their own ship and bring skepticism back into their orbit. Worse yet, it was a game in which leading scorer Tage Thompson and defenseman Mattias Samuelsson left in the second period with lower-body injuries.
“We got humbled today,” Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin said. “I think we were very excited about our previous games, and I don’t know. But we know if you’re not showing up 100 percent, it’s hard to win in this league. So, we’re going to work hard moving forward.”
More from a wild and frustrating Buffalo loss ahead.
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If you’re someone that only wants the sunny side of the street after every game, well, you’re probably a fan of a different team by this point. If you’re a Sabres fan and need that positive jolt after a bad game, consider that they twice came back from being down a goal in the first and second periods and did so by scoring less than 30 seconds after the Canadiens went ahead.
They also did it a third time in the third period, but that came after they gave up two goals in 22 seconds in the final minute of the second period to fall behind 4-3 after they’d gone ahead 3-2.
“I think it was just those goals against were really the mental lapses,” Alex Tuch said. “I didn’t think we were playing too bad defensively, we were pretty good with I think containing them to only a few chances. Those last two to end the second period obviously is brutal. When you have a lead with a minute left in the period, you can’t let that happen. Yeah, it’s just bad discipline.”
Those two late goals were the final ones allowed by starter Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen in the game. He was relieved after two periods of action and replaced by Devon Levi at the start of the third. Suzuki’s second goal looked like a bad one allowed by Luukkonen, but Sabres coach Lindy Ruff had other thoughts on the NHL’s third star of the week’s performance.
“That was really my decision,” Ruff said. “I mean, he had a little bit of an ailment yesterday. I just thought it could be affecting his play, so it was my decision to take him out and make sure nothing gets worse.”
Ruff said Luukkonen was hurt in practice so that’s something else that bears watching moving ahead. But when it came to the game, seeing a lead slip away like that was much more the theme. Just like the 5-4 lead they blew in the third period, a lead they obtained when Rasmus Dahlin and J-J Peterka scored 1:53 apart early in the period.
The Sabres’ opted to try and shell up to protect the lead, but in that process allowed Canadiens forward Emil Heineman time and space to pick his shot through a pile of players to beat Levi and tie the game at 5-5.
It was 25 seconds later when Dahlin was called for elbowing Jake Evans and put the Canadiens back on the power play.
“Way too many (penalties), especially my penalty. I take full ownership. That can’t happen,” Dahlin said.
“I thought he was going to come and hit me, so I tried to check myself. But that stuff can’t happen, especially if I’m in the time of the game and what the score was, too. So, can’t happen.”
Cole Caufield scored his second power play goal of the game moments later to put the Habs ahead for good with 7:02 to play at 6-5. Christian Dvorak’s empty-netter made it 7-5 at 19:11.
“It was a game that I think was right there for the taking for either team,” Ruff said. “You see games like this when you’re playing four games, seven days, less than seven days, maybe energy’s a little bit lower and that’s when you have to be smarter. We failed that test.”
That’s one test to fail, but the other failure was in keeping a bad team down.
Via Natural Stat Trick, at 5-on-5 the Sabres were out-chanced in high-danger situations 4-1 by the Canadiens. These are the same Canadiens who are among the bottom five teams in the NHL in the percentage of high-danger chances-for. Goals at 5-on-5 were 4-4, so even though that wasn’t great, it didn’t cost then the game, per se. Instead, it was penalties that made the difference.
“We’ve got to go over (penalties),” Ruff said. “It’s a mentality that you have to have. I know on one of the penalties, our guy was running hot, because there was an altercation a little bit sooner. You talk about emotion and being invested in the game, but there’s a fine line too.”
It’s not even like the Sabres PK performed poorly. They killed 31 seconds worth of 5-on-3 in the second period before Caufield scored his first goal on a tip at the side of the net that just got over Luukkonen’s pad. Even Caufield’s second power play goal was one where Josh Anderson’s cross-crease pass was nearly snatched up by Levi. He didn’t gather it and Caufield was able to slide the puck under Levi while he was sprawled out.
Those are tough breaks and the goals against will make the stats look less-than pretty, but on the whole the PK handled things well, it’s just that they were out there too often.
What’s hard to shake from watching a second loss like this in two weeks is that we saw it happen in the first place. Players have to play with confidence or else they won’t perform well and going into every game believing you’re going to own the day and win is mandatory. But the visual of watching a team not taking the opponent seriously is maddening.
“I don’t know if we thought it was going to be an easy game, but we kind of played like we thought that,” Dylan Cozens said. “It’s not good enough, but we learned from it.”
Learning from it is necessary for this team to be serious about getting to the postseason. There’s a level of audacity involved for any team taking another NHL team lightly. They’re all professionals and the tired saying about “any given Sunday” applies here.
Taking an opponent under you in the standings lightly is something that happens to every team, so this isn’t a Sabres-specific issue, but teams that are bound for the postseason hammer on the weaker ones more often than they try to sail past them. The points are there for the taking but leaving them behind is the difference between playing into late-April and May or going into a long offseason all over again.