The Buffalo Sabres dropped their 10th straight game in a 5-3 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs and the effects of losing are multiplying.
TORONTO — Twice in Sunday afternoon’s game, the Buffalo Sabres held a two-goal lead on the Toronto Maple Leafs and yet, in the end, they came away from it with a 5-3 loss that extended their winless streak to 10 games going 0-7-3 in that time.
At 2-0 and 3-1, the Sabres played with confidence, speed and skill. Jack Quinn scored twice on his return to the lineup after he was a healthy scratch for the past five games. The normally happy-go-lucky Quinn was downright pissed off about being out of the lineup when he spoke with media ahead of the three-game road trip. After all, if you’re being scratched from a lineup that’s not getting wins, it’s a good reason to take it a bit more personally.
And yet, on Sunday he was one of the handful of bright spots in a game that started out well and ended with a losing streak that’s reached double-digits and has left everyone frustrated, exasperated, and dumbfounded that the team is in this position.
“It’s pretty shitty, honestly,” Alex Tuch said. “Losing 10 in a row there’s no good feelings. Just got to work.”
Organizationally speaking, a losing streak this long is familiar, particularly over the past 10 years or so. This streak is the team’s longest since they dropped 18 consecutive games in the COVID-19 shortened 2020-2021 season in which coach Ralph Krueger was fired in the middle of it and replaced by Don Granato.
In reality, the Sabres are an average team that’s stuck in a rut that’s more like a trench. When you’re down that low, things are dark, and as this team heads to Montréal for a Tuesday game that could end with the team at rock bottom in the Eastern Conference standings, this is a group that collectively needs a thunderous jolt to get out of it.
“I’m almost lost for words, obviously,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “It’s on me to solve this. This is the toughest (thing to) solve I’ve been around. It is on me to get these guys in the right place to win a hockey game and nobody else, just me.”
More ahead about yet another loss and how we can cite Friedrich Nietzsche lines to apply to how things are going.
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We could break down this game for you and tell you what happened and how it went because, chances are, most people in Buffalo at least were not watching Sabres-Maple Leafs. But seeing the final score and knowing the result is the same as the nine games before it is probably enough information.
Devon Levi was recalled from Rochester to get the start and genuinely played well. He made 36 saves and held strong late in the second period after the Sabres collapsed for a span of 2:31 in which their 3-1 lead turned into a 4-3 Leafs lead. One could nitpick how Levi played the position on those three goals, but when pucks are tipped (like we saw undo the Sabres at Washington on Saturday night) with screens eating up Levi’s vision, it’s hard to fault him. He plays busy and he’s occasionally too “noisy” when playing the position, but today he was fine and held it down late in the second period when the Leafs were threatening to turn the game into a laugher.
“They capitalized on their opportunities, and it’s just the way the game goes,” Levi said. “Sometimes the biggest part after that is staying in it. It’s a one-goal game. It feels like it’s a hole that you’re in in the moment, but it’s really just a one-goal game. And you have some perspective. I think we still had half the game left to play, so the game was not over after those three goals. So being able to turn the page after that was important. I feel like the guys did it.”
John Tavares netted a natural hat trick scoring the final three goals of the game and it’s just like you have to tip your cap. Great players play great sometimes. His tip on the power play of Auston Matthews’ shot from the circle was impossible to deal with given he was standing right in front of Levi. His shot from the slot 1:10 later beat Levi while he had Jacob Bryson and Bobby McMann parked in front of him. The empty-net goal in the third iced the game.
In these games with blown leads, however, there’s always one goal that in the moment makes you stop and wonder how they’ll respond to it and during this streak, the way the Sabres have dealt with that hardship was to allow more bad things to happen in rapid succession. Today was no different.
Toronto’s three-goal burst started with Nick Robertson’s one-timer from the circle on what was essentially a 3-on-2 where Quinn tried to grab a puck off the wall on his backhand in the neutral zone, but it jumped his stick, and the Leafs forwards were all there ready to pounce on it against Bo Byram and Henri Jokiharju. Domi broke in, hit McMann in the slot and he fed it to Robertson for the one-timer all in a flash.
It’s a goal that’s not really anyone’s fault. Bad bounces and bad luck are part of the game, although if there’s something to be unhappy about it’s how the Sabres tried to get forward change in as the Leafs turned the puck back up the ice quickly. Still, if Quinn gets that puck there was a chance they could’ve caught Toronto off-guard for an odd-man opportunity. C’est la vie.
“Yeah, we score the first goal in a lot of these games,” Tuch said. “We’ve come from behind and tied it up in a lot of these games. It’s not good enough.”
A big part of this that’s equal parts looming over the entire franchise and hyper focused on what’s going on right now is how much losing is etched into the bones of all of it. From Darcy Regier invoking suffering when he started to trade players away in 2013, to Tim Murray bottoming things out in the years to come, and then to everything else that’s followed since the acceptance that losing will happen and the willingness to lose is like handling raw plutonium. You can stop holding it but the effects will be around for a long time after it.
I can’t help but think back to that 2014-2015 season when on December 15th, 2014 they were 31 games into the season and had 28 points. They were four points out of the second wild card and had just won their fourth straight game all the while the wink-wink-nudge-nudge plan to be the losingest team in the league was looking sketchy.
A month-and-a-half later on January 30th, 2015, they were 50 games deep into the season and sat last in the league with 31 points and had a stretch in which they lost 18 of 19 games including 14 straight without a point. This came to mind the other night when Jason Zucker was asked after the Sabres 6-5 shootout loss to Detroit about coming to Buffalo and enduring this kind of skid.
“Every team in the league, and pretty much every year, has done it,” Zucker said. “So, it’s not just the Buffalo Sabres. It’s every single team in the league. I lost one 14-in-a-row in Minnesota. We’ve all done it. The entire league has done it. It’s not a Buffalo Sabre thing. It’s a National Hockey League thing. You’ve got to learn how to get out of it. It doesn’t mean it’s okay. You’ve got to learn how to get out of it, and you’ve got to learn how to play your game and we’ve got to be better.”
To a point, he’s right. It is an everyone thing. The Edmonton Oilers had a wretched stretch last season where they lost 10 of their first 12 games and wound up nearly winning the Stanley Cup. But this streak for the Sabres isn’t new, it’s well-worn territory and the fact that the last time they had a run like this was the 18-game losing streak a few years back, one in which there are still a few guys on the roster who experienced it to varying levels, speaks volumes because those guys aren’t even old (Rasmus Dahlin, Tage Thompson, Dylan Cozens, Mattias Samuelsson, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen).
It’s remarkable to have something like that happen that’s distant history in sports time (four years ago) and yet most of the leadership group of this team knows what it’s like. That’s staggering!
What’s more is to have Ruff speak about how this is one of the hardest things he’s tried to solve in his coaching career. He’s coached more than 1,800 games and fifth all-time in wins. He’s in the same company as guys like Scotty Bowman, Joel Quenneville, Paul Maurice and Barry Trotz with the one big difference being he hasn’t won a Cup. Being left speechless by this run of losses after all those games with Buffalo, Dallas and New Jersey is genuinely incredible.
We’ve seen history like this too many times already and when an organization is trying to stop losing after expecting to and wanting to lose after those years, it feels cruelly fated that it keeps happening. When gazing into the abyss the way the organization has, the abyss gazes into them.
Perhaps this is just where my own mind goes after witnessing all of this for so many years. This team has far too many truly talented players who are fiercely competitive to get stuck in a mire like this and they are capable of turning things around eventually. It’s hard to believe that in this moment but something has to give at some point.
The half-life of handling losing lasts an undetermined amount of time, but this malaise, this blight, this total and utter despondency that menaces the organization must be solved and when we’re overwhelmed with questions and none of the answers have proven to be accurate… change is inevitable.