MONTRÉAL — After turning the puck over endlessly in Game 2 at home, the Buffalo Sabres walked into the fury and fervor that is Bell Centre and tempted fate by doing many of those same things again while also adding some careless penalties into the mix. In the end, Game 3 wound up going the same way as Game 2 with a loss, this time 6-2 and now they’re down 2-1 in the best-of-seven series.
“We’ve got to be smart,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “We took five O-zone penalties. Our discipline for that wasn’t good enough. You let them operate 5-on-4. We ended up with a broken stick penalty-killing goal again. You give them that much time, they’re going to get opportunities.”
The opportunities were plenty and forced Alex Lyon to be on his game immediately. What’s twisted about talking about the game like this is that the Sabres did exactly what they wanted to do to take the sold-out Bell Centre and scored in the opening minute for a 1-0 lead. After a miserable performance in Game 2, Tage Thompson took a rebound of a Rasmus Dahlin shot and stuffed it home after it went off a Canadiens player and off the end boards right to him at the far post.
It’s not how you draw it up, necessarily, but the goal came to be after Sabres pressure forced the Canadiens to try and float the puck out of the zone, but the effort lacked the oomph and Dahlin pulled it down at the blue line. It was a prime example of the way the Sabres wanted to flip the script from Game 2 and they accomplished it on the opening shift.
“I thought our game today was an interesting one,” Thompson said. “I thought we started off really good. There was spurts throughout the game where I thought we got to our game and played to our standard, but just not consistent enough.”
The 1-0 lead held until there was 4:29 to go in the first when Alex Newhook put a rebound home after Lyon made a spectacular save on Jake Evans only to see Newhook’s shot go off Conor Timmins and into the net to tie the game. To that point, Lyon made countless 10-bell saves to bail out his teammates who either made mistakes to allow Grade-A chances, lost coverage or flat out got beat to spots in the zone. If not for Lyon’s efforts, the game that wound up being out of reach would’ve been fitting for Just For Laughs instead.
“They played a strong game tonight, no doubt about it,” Lyon said. “They played better than us. Second period got away a little bit. You always think about your own game. I wish I could’ve found a way to make a save in there, kept it to another goal. But no doubt, I think that they played a very strong game tonight, showed why this is a dangerous team.”
The Sabres were quick to give the Canadiens their flowers after the game and when you lose 6-2, yeah, that checks out. The second period did see things get away from them, though, and penalties were a big reason why. Montréal scored three times in the second, twice on the power play to push out to a 4-1 lead. Although Rasmus Dahlin added his own power play goal with 5:14 to go in the second to cut it to 4-2, that’s as close as they’d get the rest of the night.
Penalties and mistakes are a terrible combination and the Sabres kept pairing them up.
“Some of our puck decisions haven’t been good, but some of the discipline in the game, maybe I disagree with maybe a couple of calls, but I think every night, somebody’s going to disagree with a call here or there,” Ruff said. “Our discipline is something that, for the Game 6 in Boston, team didn’t take a penalty.”
Referencing Game 6 against the Bruins is a good one because that game also came in a hostile atmosphere following a loss at home in which they got an early goal. Only against the Bruins that goal allowed them to continue to put pressure on them and roll to victory. Temerity was needed against the Canadiens after quieting things down and, instead, their emotions got away from them.
“The place was loud tonight, and you feel the energy, and you feel that they had momentum off of it,” Thompson said. “But that’s just something that we’ve got to get used to, something that can’t affect us – any of the outside noise. It’s about everyone in this room and just getting to our game. I think we worried about other things that were out of our control – the refs, the calls and what they were doing. Just a little distracted, I thought, in my opinion. So, everyone in this room has better. We still haven’t gotten to what I think is our best game, and obviously it starts with me. Starts with me, starts with Dahls, Tuchy. There’s more in the tank, there’s more we can do, another level we can get to, and we’ve just got to find it.”
The start of the third period gave the Sabres a window to tighten the game up. There was an interference penalty by Lane Hutson as he got in Beck Malenstyn’s way after a play up the wall and with a power play opportunity, the time was there to strike. But the ease and quickness they found on their previous power play that led to Dahlin’s goal wasn’t there as the Canadiens adjusted and took away passing lanes and got in the way more.
Two minutes after the power play ended, Kirby Dach snatched a puck away from Lyon after yet another huge save and finished it off to make it academic at 5-2.
“We got the best start we could get to the game,” Ruff said. “And then, again, we’re breaking a couple of pucks out and we made some ill-advised plays, some bad decisions that we haven’t been making. Montreal’s good team. They made us pay. They made us pay for our mistakes.”
Newhook was awarded a second goal when Dahlin did everything possible (and against the rules) to prevent him from scoring into an empty net to make it 6-2. It was a lopsided game that wound up being closer than the score line shows and yet still felt like a drubbing for the Sabres. If that makes sense to you then you were watching closely. As dire as the loss felt for those outside of the dressing room, inside it was a (rightfully) different story.
“I’ve said it before, it’s a weird thing the playoffs,” Bo Byram said. “The momentum shifts, it’s a real mental grind. You win one, you think you’re winning in four. You lose one, you think you’re losing in five then you lose again Game 3 and you just can’t let those thoughts get into your head.
“Like I said, they’re a good hockey team, man, they showed that tonight. But we all know in here that when we’re at the top of our game and playing as good as we can, we’re a good hockey team, too. Like I said, we just got to get there, get our game going and we have a lot of confidence in this room. No one’s got their head hung walking out of here. They beat us, you take it like a man, and move on to the next one.”
Some fans after Game 2 were getting itchy to maybe see Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen for Game 3 and even though Lindy Ruff made it clear before Game 3 that he wouldn’t hesitate to go back to Luukkonen, now was not that time. After seeing Lyon try to pull a miracle in Game 3 and prevented the final score from being something truly hideous, he wasn’t about to hear any questions about his play after the game.
“He was very good all night,” Ruff said. “I’ll stop you right there. He was very good all night. Nothing about Alex Lyon this game.”
Game 3 saw Sam Carrick return to the lineup although he was very limited with 6:17 time on ice. He won two of eight draws and with the special teams and chasing the score line on top of it being his first game since getting injured, yeah, he wasn’t going to see a lot of action.
That said, Jason Zucker’s 6:47 time on ice was quite noticeable. There were no notable mistakes in his game and many of the gaps between his shifts were thanks to special teams and the penalty shenanigans that persisted in the second period. He also missed out on power play time after he was moved to the second unit and the first group managed to play well. Still, he’s a team leader that barely played while his linemates Ryan McLeod (13:51) and Jack Quinn (15:28) saw a semi-regular amount of playing time. Keeping in mind that McLeod plays on the PK and Quinn was moved to PP1, that helps explain some of it, but not all of it.
Ruff said Zucker is physically healthy so… what happened?
“He just, really, he got caught not being on the No. 1 power play, and then with all the penalty killing, I think he sat there quite a while,” Ruff said. “So, I tried to get the guys that were up and running, just keep them out there.”
You don’t have to take anything anyone says in the playoffs as gospel, but you should hang onto it for later use in case something changes. Given how the Sabres have excelled by setting games and forgetting them once they’re over, win or lose, we may not get any real answers about this for a while… if there are even answers to be found. Still, it’s more than noteworthy, particularly in a game they were chasing.
If you missed it elsewhere, I wrote about Games 1 and 2 of the series, or at least based some writing around those games, for Bleacher Report. Please do check those pieces out.
Game 1 on the arrival of the young and no-longer rebuilding Sabres and Canadiens
Game 2 on Jakub Dobeš taking over as “The Man” in goal for the Canadiens