A day after getting pumped up by owner Terry Pegula, the Sabres dropped their 11th straight game to fall to last place in the Eastern Conference.
MONTRÉAL — One day ago, following the Buffalo Sabres’ 10th straight loss, a 5-3 defeat against the Toronto Maple Leafs, owner Terry Pegula arrived in Quebec to speak with the team and get them focused to snap out of what’s been the lowest point of the season and began ranking up with other losing streaks from lost seasons’ past.
The message was loud and clear for the players when they spoke about it on Tuesday morning ahead of their matchup against the Montréal Canadiens. They liked that the owner took the time to encourage them, and the plan was that this could be the turning point to get the Sabres pointed back up the standings in the Eastern Conference.
It was 19 seconds into Tuesday night’s game when Jake Evans’ shot went off the end boards and off the skate of the referee right to the front of the net for Joel Armia to put away and gave the Canadiens a 1-0 lead.
A team that’s fragile and has been thrown off its game repeatedly since the losing streak began at the end of November can’t often withstand fits of bad luck. A team that’s had goals against, fluky and true alike, turn the tide of numerous losses suffering a blow like that to start the game would be enough to test their mettle.
Armia’s goal served to be an uppercut out of the blue that put the Sabres on the mat for the final 59:41 that remained to be played.
“I just thought it was that first goal just bothered us too much,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “Then it was we’re going to race here, race there. I thought we settled down about the 10-minute mark finally and we got organized.”
It was 6:07 later when Patrik Laine scored the first of his three goals on the night to make it 2-0 and if not for Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen making a few great stops in the first, the game would’ve been all but over after 20 minutes. Hindsight taught us otherwise.
“Just no legs, no jump, no energy,” Connor Clifton said. “You think, obviously, with the meeting yesterday, a 10-game losing streak at least we have legs and energy. We didn’t. Chased the whole game.”
Hoo boy.
More from Bell Center and trying to figure out what happens now.
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Watching this group of Sabres has offered up enough to believe they’re predictable and yet we’re left with a lot of surprises in the end.
The last time they faced the Canadiens, at home 16 games ago, players admitted they maybe took them too lightly since they’re also going through it and struggling terribly. Yet they still blew a 5-4 third period lead that game and lost 7-5 in one of the handful of games in which they chased the starter and lost to the replacement.
Tonight’s game was on a vastly different level with the Sabres in a much more miserable mental space and when you consider that the head coach told us he felt they were fighting it from 19 seconds in, what can you even do about that?
“We started that fourth line to get the puck in deep and try to create some energy right off the bat, and we get a tough break going the other the way, and all of a sudden, we gave them energy,” Ruff said. “And I think that fueled them right off the bat, which didn’t allow us, really, (to) get into the game.”
It’s hard to escape the fact that a goal that early could derail an entire game. Hell, they were down 2-0 after 20 very poor minutes of play. But there was a spark to start the second when Dylan Cozens made it 2-1 3:43 in with a great shot that beat Samuel Montembeault high glove and rocketed off the back bar and out. That’s the kind of goal in a game with that score that should help turn the momentum, particularly against a team that’s having as hard a time as Montréal.
The Canadiens were able to get it right back 2:11 later when Juraj Slafkovský banked a shot in off of Luukkonen after he’d stopped Cole Caufield alone in front. The puck went below the goal line and Slafkovský pounced on it to bank it in. About four minutes after that, the penalties stacked up.
Bo Byram was dinged for a slashing call at 8:02 and was followed up by an Alex Tuch high-stick 1:28 later that put the Canadiens on a 5-on-3. Fifteen seconds later, Laine buried his second of the night on the two-man advantage.
It was 26 seconds after the goal when Cozens batted a puck out of play to put the Habs back on a 5-on-3 and 44 seconds after that, Laine made the hats fly from the crowd with his hat trick goal. Just think, he nearly had four in the game when a first period shot was signaled a goal by the official but upon review was found to go off the inside of the goal post instead. One player’s remarkable night was pure undistilled misery for the other.
“I was on for a couple of breakdowns,” Clifton said. “I should’ve been on (Laine) both times. Obviously, a shooter like that can’t be winding up from the dot or the top of the circle instead of the dot. Yeah, I think that just goes into how our game is right now. It’s not good.”
At that point it’s 5-1 in the game, the crowd at Bell Centre is roaring in adulation for Laine and the “Olé” chants began to ring out. Good or bad, when the crowd in Montréal is into the game it makes a major difference. On this night, they emboldened the home team and withered the visitors. The festive atmosphere only grew more so when Josh Anderson deposited a puck into a yawning net when a pass from Christian Dvorak, who had just spent the shift making the Sabres chase him around, went into Owen Power’s skates. While Power tried to find the puck, it skittered away towards Anderson for the easy put-away with 45 seconds left in the second period.
It was yet another miserable second period for Buffalo and a big tease all at once considering they started it off with a goal to make it a one-goal deficit and they ended it down five.
When you think back to when the team returned from California and were riding high after sweeping Los Angeles, Anaheim, and San Jose and the idea of reaching the playoffs started to swirl and where this team is now… it’s startling.
“Yeah, sure does suck, doesn’t it,” Alex Tuch said. “It’s horrible. But, like I said, the season’s not over. We’re going to come back and be better tomorrow. And, like I said, I wasn’t good enough today, so I know that I need to be better.”
Being an alternate captain means Tuch is going to wear it after a loss no matter what, but he certainly wasn’t alone in having a rough game. This one was a full team effort and one that just defies description considering everything that’s gone down the past 24-36 hours with the owner dropping in and attempting to calm things down.
Instead, we’re left examining another loss and this one was an all-out stinker with zero excuse and we’re all wondering what in the world could come next. Trades? Firings? Demotions? It could all be on the table and there are few, if any, people you could claim as exempt from that.
If there’s any modicum of credit to be given in all of this, it’s that the players say the right things about it. As we’ve gotten to saying over the years though, talk is cheap and actions do, indeed, speak louder.
Tuesday night against the Canadiens was a night for action, it was just the kind that no one anticipated. Now they’re riding an 11-game losing streak and with an off day on Wednesday before they return to practice on Thursday ahead of welcoming the Maple Leafs and their fans to pack out the joint on Friday, the possibility of actions to come from up high will loom no matter what the players say or believe.
“I think we talk about how it’s in this room and that’s what we believe, we just need more from each and every guy; more every part of our game right now needs more,” Clifton said. “We’re just not playing together, we’re all over the place. One mistake happens and it’s in the back of our net. It can’t be like that, mistakes are going to happen, you’ve got to bail someone out. Big block, big save, next guy closes and takes away whatever.
“It’s snowballing right now and that’s how it is right now. One mistake and it’s in the back of our net. So we’ve got to be more prideful. We’re in a challenge right now, we’re in a battle. We’re six games back from .500 and there’s always ups and downs in the year–this is pretty far down right now for us. Like I said, we expect better, and we’ve got to be better.”