Disturbingly familiar occurrences made some appearances in the Buffalo Sabres brutal 6-4 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets
COLUMBUS — It would be easy (and rather lazy) to say that the Sabres 6-4 loss to the Blue Jackets was something we’ve seen before in the recent past. But the situation with the Sabres is different under Lindy Ruff, at least it’s supposed to be.
The attitude was different headed into training camp as well as into the start of the regular season. But Wednesday’s loss on the road in Pittsburgh and Thursday’s defeat were examples of how echoes from the past remain.
In some cases, they’re deeply familiar and never seem to disappear completely (like Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin), but in other ways, they’re different despite them playing out like a rerun on television back in the day. Thursday’s loss was like a gritty reboot of a game from last season just without a lot of the actual grit.
Alex Tuch said the Sabres lacked urgency from the start of the game and the Blue Jackets came out all guns blazing, pressuring the Sabres all over the ice and forcing them to make fast puck decisions that went awry. But citing a lack of urgency in the sixth game of the season is a bit of a staggering thought.
“I think we just got to support each other more with and without the puck, and just in general,” Tuch said. “We knew they were coming with a lot of energy, and we can’t let that get to us and force us to come away from our game. So just a lot more support with each other.”
Rasmus Dahlin felt he was forcing a lot of plays and that forced plays lead to problems. He wasn’t alone in trying to make something happen out of nothing, but he put it on himself to be better to set an example. Falling on your sword is noble.
“You want to win,” Dahlin said. “That’s the start and then sometimes you have to just play your shift and move on to the next one and wait for your opportunity.”
The defense playing as poorly as they did against Columbus was perhaps the new wrinkle to make the familiar seem a little different. Dahlin owned up for his errors, but all of their defensemen had moments they’d like to forget.
“Yeah, it’s surprising,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “Plays that we didn’t make for a couple of games, then all of a sudden, we’ve made some ill-advised plays. It creates momentum for the other team.”
On top of all of those things, Devon Levi wasn’t able to make up for the mistakes and contributed his own tough night to make it really hard to take anything positive away from the game. At least Jiri Kulich got his first NHL goal.
More from a tough night in the Buckeye State ahead.
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Parts of the Sabres’ loss to Pittsburgh had some burn-the-tape moments, but the loss to the Blue Jackets was virtually an entire game’s worth of video to dump into Lake Michigan once they arrive in Chicago.
Just off the top of my head, the most glaring errors came from Mattias Samuelsson late in the first period trying to start a rush out of the defensive zone with a cross-ice pass that everyone in the building saw coming that was intercepted by Kirill Marchenko who snapped a shot past Levi that put the Sabres down 2-0 headed into the intermission rather than holding at 1-0 off Yegor Chinakhov’s power play goal 5:12 into the game.
They obtained that power play when Connor Clifton, in an effort to perhaps wake the team up, hammered Cole Sillinger away from the puck for an interference penalty. That hit put Sillinger off the ice for a short time, but he ultimately returned to the game and had an assist in the second period on Mathieu Olivier’s goal that made it 4-2 Columbus with 2:02 to go in the period.
That Olivier goal was helped by Owen Power not picking up Olivier as he crashed in from the wing to bury the rebound of Sillinger’s shot which Levi couldn’t angle away to a less dangerous place.
Damon Severson’s goal that made it 6-2 with 11:50 to play in the third was helped by Dahlin not picking him up as he cruised through the slot to take Marchenko’s pass from the wall that set him up. Of course, none of the forwards that watched Severson skate past them helped out in defending him either.
It was Ugly, with the capital “U” being very necessary for effect.
If it wasn’t singular players making themselves known, entire units struggled again. The Sabres penalty kill had a hard time containing the Penguins with Malkin, Crosby, Kris Letang, Erik Karlsson and the rest of the crew the night before, which is almost understandable. But the Blue Jackets cashed in on the power play early to set the tone for the game and the PK, which looks great often, has killed 71.4% of the penalties they’ve faced this year. That puts them in the bottom-10 of the NHL for now.
The power play, again, failed to score and moved them to 0-for-17 so far for the season. They were 0-for-2 on Thursday night and despite glimpses of progress being made in how they enter and establish themselves in the zone, no goals came from it. They’re one of three teams this season still without a power play goal. Carolina (0-for-5 in two games) and Anaheim (0-for-11 in three games) are the others. The Sabres’ 17 power play opportunities tie them for sixth most in the league. It’s OK to be a work in progress if you’re winning games, but there’s far more pressure when you’re not.
What’s a killer is they’ve scored 14 goals at 5-on-5 which ties them for most in the NHL with New Jersey and Vegas. At even strength they’ve scored 16 which ties them with New Jersey and Utah for most in the NHL. Scoring well at evens or fives is great and something that they can carry forth, but the special teams failing them is a backbreaker right now. They’re not doomed to fail at this all year, but it is distressing to see it happening again while Ruff and Seth Appert work to change all of that around.
What adds to the frustration from the outside is how Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen had a tough game against Pittsburgh followed up by Levi having a brutal performance in Columbus. The parts that are meant to be the strengths of this team (defense, goaltending) have taken it on the chin the past two games and crushed the momentum built from how well they played for 40 minutes against the Kings and the totality of their win against Florida.
For now, they’re on to Chicago and then have a battle with the very difficult Dallas Stars at home next week. They’ve got business to take care of and issues to get figured out.
“It’s game by game,” Tuch said. “Working on Chicago, working on getting ready for that game, starting with tonight, getting your rest tomorrow, getting ready to go mentally and physically. It’s a different Chicago team than we’ve seen the last couple of years. They brought in a lot of vets. They’re going to be a really good hockey team. It’s gonna be really good challenge for us. Able to come away off of a three-game road trip with three out of six points isn’t great, but it’s not the worst thing in the world, so that’s what our goal is right now. That’s it.”
Other stuff
Jiri Kulich returned to the lineup and took the place of Jack Quinn who was a healthy scratch. Quinn’s been fighting it a bit this season and a night off for a young guy who’s stressing is OK. Besides, Kulich has played well and getting him action is good. It proved to be better for Kulich personally after he scored his first NHL goal on a deflection in front of the net that wasn’t reviewed for a possible high stick.
“Feels nice to score your first NHL goal,” Kulich said. “Everybody just dreaming of that and, for me, came true, but it’s a tough loss.”
It’s nice to see Kulich get a goal because he’s played well and he’s earning more daily. But getting Quinn back on track is vital and doing that while everything is sour with the losses and misplays is even more difficult. Then again, all it takes is to pop one goal to get feeling good about yourself.