The Sabres had the Canadiens on the ropes but fell for the classic trope of letting a team hang around long enough to beat you in the end.
BUFFALO — It’s a hard thing when a team is able to do mostly everything the right way and to come away on the short end of a decision. That’s how Monday’s game went for the Buffalo Sabres in a 3-1 loss to the Montréal Canadiens.
The Sabres outshot and out-attempted the Canadiens but had to eat another early-season loss. The scoreline doesn’t look flattering but the rest of the box score does and while that points out how things are coming together in a way, the lack of a “W” in the end is the part that stings the most.
“This team and this group will score,” Sabres coach Don Granato said. “Yeah, it’s frustrating tonight. You had numerous chances that they didn’t convert on. But I do think, as I said, when you’re struggling to score, go to the net more. Be willing to score maybe the ugly one, the grittier one. And that’s how you resolve it.”
Buffalo is 2-4-0 so far this year and it’s easy to get panicked because most of the division is having success early on, but the lack of net drive is clearly something they’ve got to do more work on.
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When you look a little deeper at the advanced stats on Natural Stat Trick about this game, there’s a really big glaring one that sticks out at 5-on-5: high danger chances.
Despite Montréal getting outshot at 5-on-5 all game by Buffalo and being even in total scoring chances (19-19), it was the high-danger chances where they drove the Sabres nuts with a 12-4 advantage. The Canadiens were able to get in close to the net and create shots and opportunities around the crease and that’s ultimately where the go-ahead goal was scored by Brendan Gallagher.
In their two wins against Tampa Bay and the New York Islanders, the Sabres generated 26 high-danger chances at 5-on-5 and allowed 12. In their four losses, however, Buffalo has 21 high-danger chances and allowed 41 (Source).
It’s a matter of them getting to the dirty areas but also about them cleaning up their own as well as they’ve scored four high-danger goals and allowed seven.
“I think as soon as you let frustration set in, negativity, you’re never going to get out of it,” Tage Thompson said. “I think goals come in waves. I think a lot of times they come in waves, and you get streaky. You just got to do the right things every shift. I thought tonight we did. Obviously, that’s why that one hurts so much. But we can’t change anything. We got to play like that. That’s two games we’ve strung together in a row now that I think we took away the will of the other team, had them kind of defeated mentally. And, obviously, they get one in the third there it gives them some life. But we keep playing like that, that’s a winning recipe. We’re going to win a lot of games playing like that.”
It might be easy to get annoyed reading or hearing that and thinking it’s empty clichés and whatnot, but Thompson is right. Doing the right things and sticking with it is the way to get on track and allowing the end result to change the thinking on it is easy path to harder times.
Did the Sabres play a perfect game against Canadiens? Not at all.
Alex Tuch had a tough night as did Owen Power. Eric Comrie played well in goal, but the first one he allowed on a long rebound he lost track of just 2:56 into the first period made it a tough way to start the game. It was another game in which they had to dig out of a hole from the get-go to try and get into their own game.
Jeff Skinner got it back relatively quickly with a power play goal in which he roofed one past Jake Allen, but the Habs goalie got into a groove and making big stops against a team that’s a little frustrated by their own lack of scoring is a good way to ensure they stay frustrated. It showed, especially late after the Habs regained the lead in the third.
“I mean, you always try to get traffic, the other team’s always trying to not let you get traffic,” Skinner said. “So, they did a good job obviously, but we can do better. We can do better at creating chances inside, whether it’s slashing through and trying to find timing plays or whether it’s going to stand there and not moving. But yeah, we definitely need to get inside more. I think it’s too many shots from outside. But obviously he saved them, so credit to him.”
Shots are good and taking more of them is also good. Those aren’t the problems for the Sabres. They’ve carried the bulk of the shot attempts at 5-on-5 in four of the six games, only the Rangers and Flames were able to out-attempt them. Sure, they could do it even more, there have been countless opportunities where they’ve “tried to pass the puck into the net,” but when it comes to the quality of their opportunities and what they’ve given up to opponents, the drive is the thing and that means gritting your teeth and going to the net.
“You need to find a goal, you need to find a way to break through and just didn’t do enough, didn’t do enough to capitalize on zone time or the outside shots maybe, I don’t know what you want to call that,” Skinner said. “But it doesn’t matter unless you score, so we’ve got to find a way to do that.”