A regular old 3-1 loss to Tampa Bay came down to a couple of turnovers and it’s only infuriating if you allow it to be.
The Sabres matinee with Tampa Bay was a bit of a measuring stick of sorts. The Lightning are classically very good and they came into the game on a winning streak. It was the right time to find out if the Sabres were up to snuff against a team that always brings out the best (and sometimes the worst) of Buffalo.
A pair of first period turnovers, one from Casey Mittelstadt in the defensive zone and another from Alex Tuch on the power play, turned into Lightning goals from Nick Paul and Tyler Motte and that was enough to ultimately put the Sabres down in a 3-1 loss.
The collective angst is understandable. It was a winnable game against a good team that ultimately fell short because of errors. It’s happened more than a few times this season and it gets tiresome to see games go that way. Add in a late power play being nullified by an awful slashing call to Zach Benson and it had all the marks of a game being “taken away” from a young team that’s been going through it all year.
It’s frustrating, it’s annoying, it’s repeated and for a lot of you it’s probably enough to last you the rest of the season. With the California trip coming up before the All-Star Break next week, it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of everyone.
“I mentioned even yesterday this is a team, this is a league, it’s puck management,” Sabres coach Don Granato said. “I think Jon Cooper had a press conference yesterday and said the same thing about his team, puck management, where they don’t manage the puck well, it’s cost them, and it cost us (today) in that regard the first two goals. So it’s a big, big part of the National Hockey League is managing the puck well. When you don’t, they got guys that can convert, and that’s usually what they do before you defend. Teams are pretty good once they get in their defensive structure in this league. We were when we got in our structure and limited it. But it’s tough to get in your structure when you turn the puck over the couple times we did.”
Level-headed analysis time here…
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Some of the social media reaction to this Sabres loss has been a bit much. Different key players being cursed out and finger-pointing and the gnashing teeth and rendering garments is a lot. And it’s easy to see where those frustrated feelings come from, but if there was a loss to want to burn down the entire organization for suffering, this wasn’t the one.
Turnovers happen to literally every team. No one player is perfect with the puck and good teams can make opponents pay for making them. Tampa Bay did that today. Nick Paul’s goal happened in an instant after Mittelstadt turned it over on the wall to Anthony Cirelli. Cirelli fired it to Brandon Hagel in front and Hagel dished over to Paul to bury a one-timer. A truly tough break but a prime example of how quickly a mistake can wind up in the back of the net.
Motte’s goal came shorthanded when Tuch couldn’t corral the puck near the blue line and Motte took off on a breakaway. Rasmus Dahlin tried to get back to disrupt him, but Motte’s shot came quick and went five-hole on Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen.
In a game where shots and chances were relatively few, plays like those created a hole that was tough to climb out from.
“I thought we were just sloppy with the puck,” Tage Thompson said. “I think we forced a lot of things through the neutral zone and into their pressure, making the game a little more difficult on ourselves and obviously that’s how they got the first two goals, just kind of freebies for them. The game plan going in there was just to make them work and make them defend and I think we let them off a little easy (today), gave them kind of an easy game and obviously they get a two-goal lead now we’re chasing a little bit… I think we just made the game a little bit too easy for them tonight.”
“SAME OLD SABRES!”
Yeah, I hear you man, I get it. But these games happen and it’s just more upsetting when the team has been stumbling all season and now, they’re very looking like a team that’s going to miss the postseason. They’re not out of it, of course, although when people started pouring dirt on them late last season, they made that one last push over the final few weeks. Never say never, of course, but the vibes are, and have been, very much off for this group this season.
What doesn’t help in close games like these are key moments being taken away.
The Sabres earned a power play with 8:04 left in the third period when Michael Eyissmont was whistled for tripping. On the ensuing power play, a shot came in on Lightning goalie (and old friend of the program) Jonas Johansson who covered it with his trapper. Zach Benson took a little poke before the whistle was blown and was mildly accosted by the Tampa Bay defenders. It was also whistled as a slashing penalty by rookie referee Morgan MacPhee.
In a 2-1 game and the Sabres having momentum in their favor, having that call made is a brutal turn, particularly when the Sabres thought there was another offense against them let go.
“Fifteen seconds into that power play, Thompson got completely wrapped up and held in the corner,” Granato said. “I get it. No call. You don’t put a team down 5-on-3, I understand that. But they got a freebie right there. Then all of a sudden, I haven’t seen that called all year long. So I’m not an official, I’m just telling you what I saw. Tommer got wrapped up, tied up in the corner. It spent 20 seconds in the corner, wasn’t called. And then the poke that Benson made, I think it was called a slash, he was poking for the puck. Again, I haven’t seen that called all year, so, obviously, that’s frustrating.”
Granato didn’t like it, players didn’t like, fans hated it — just about everyone felt that wasn’t a call (although I’d guess Tampa Bay was cool with it) but these things happen sometimes. What’s tough is that it’s happened to the Sabres star rookie a few times this year. He plays aggressive and he annoys opponents because he goes non-stop until the whistle blows. But he’s been the victim of a few calls that just aren’t made against 99 percent of players in the league, particularly those with more seniority.
“That’s frustrating because you feel for Zach,” Granato said. “He’s got to play aggressive and tenacious. When you look at the standard, that’s not even that aggressive, that particular play right there which is, again, frustrating. You feel for Zach, you certainly wonder as a younger guy in the league. I won’t say anymore, but you wonder.”
This game was on such a thread that a call like that is a hugely deflating one. But for the better part of the game, the Sabres struggled to gain the zone. For that matter, so did the Lightning. It was a mutually defensively strong game, and had the decision gone the other way, it would’ve been a sizable feather in the Sabres’ cap. Instead, it’s one where the offense was unable to find more action and goals were hard to come by. But that again was due to the old problem of not being able to create enough traffic or having patience enough to dump the puck in and get things going the old-fashioned way.
“We knew we just had to get it behind them and work,” Dylan Cozens said. “Make them turn it over and spread the zone and just get pucks to the net and try to have guys around the net. We didn’t do a good enough job at that though.”
Cozens, who missed the past couple games with an upper-body issue, returned to the lineup and once he was reunited with JJ Peterka and Jack Quinn, scored the Sabres’ lone goal. Granato thought that trio played all right together, but he shuffled lines around a couple times looking for a spark somewhere. When he put Casey Mittelstadt with Thompson and Tuch late in the second, that helped get those guys going and even led to a short breakaway for Tuch early in the third which Johansson made a solid pad save on. Little moments that go against you look a lot bigger when you don’t come away with one or two points.
“I’ve got to bury that breakaway,” Tuch said. “We had some other opportunities. Some net-front battles that I thought we gave some good shots and rebounds to. There wasn’t really anything laying out there that we could just whack at and even when we had guys there. You could take so much, but it’s still a loss.”
Losses are always a disappointment, and they’re frustrating when they play out like this game did. But no one game is an indictment on anyone, just the same as no one game can crown someone as the be-all, end-all. It’s just a disappointing result and one of more than a few this season, it’s just rough because the hope of playoffs in a season where the hopes were highest are dwindling.
But if there’s going to be a game to call for heads to roll or guys to be benched or any number of other kinds of things you might want to happen, it’s yet to be played and demanding that kind of turmoil after so many seasons of having that exact thing play out right now is too much. We’ve seen what that kind of ugly is and we haven’t seen that yet. Here’s hoping we don’t.