The Sabres both had every reason to deserve a win against Vegas on Saturday afternoon, even if it didn’t look like it would happen for a while.
BUFFALO — The Buffalo Sabres beat the Vegas Golden Knights 4-3 in a shootout on Saturday and it was such an odd game for both teams.
The Pacific Division leading Golden Knights looked off all game long and even when things got heated there wasn’t the kind of wicked response you’d expect from a team with vicious competitors on the roster like they have. They led for a majority of the game and even got the lead back after Buffalo tied it midway into the third period. Even though they were outshot by the Sabres all game, they had an odd hold on the game, probably because of the Sabres.
And yet, the Sabres hung around. They battled, they were imperiled in a few different ways, their hopes were dashed and rescued and ultimately fulfilled in the end.
It was a sleepy game turned on its head and into a thriller. What more could you want?
“A step in the right direction, for sure,” captain Rasmus Dahlin said. “Now we look like a team. We’ve had a lot of discussion lately, how we want to play these last, whatever, 20 games or whatever it is. Today was a good step in the right direction. Now it’s up to us to keep going.”
With so much to discuss and recap and kick ideas around about, let’s just get to the action.
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Vegas had leads of 1-0 and 2-0, although the 2-0 lead lasted all of seven seconds before Ryan McLeod cut it to 2-1 in the second period. Jason Zucker tied it in the third with a power play goal (of course).
Then with 2:33 to go, the fates got twisted. Jack Eichel put a rebound of a Mark Stone shot into the net to give Vegas a 3-2 lead. The celebration was huge, and it appeared that the local pariah had gotten one over on his old team on their ice once again. Worse yet, it came to be because of a mistake by Dahlin.
“I mean, all their chances tonight was from my fuck ups,” Dahlin said. “I got to stop doing that, and we’ll be a really good net team.”
Dahlin owning his mistakes is the right thing to do, but he wasn’t alone throughout the game.
“The reason we’ve been losing a lot of games is puck management,” Lindy Ruff said. “If you ask (Dahlin), he’s going, to a man, say wrong play. Wrong play, wrong time. We have to get rid of wrong play, wrong time. A couple minutes left, he understands it. Keep the puck to the outside. Guys get in position. We made another high-risk play that we paid dearly for.”
Although Dahlin helped cause the go-ahead goal and that was rough, Golden Knights forward Tomáš Hertl erred in another brutal way. The Sabres pulled Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen for the extra attacker after Eichel put Vegas ahead and Hertl had the opportunity to bury the puck into the open net. Instead of doing that, however, he tried to cheekily drop a pass back to Eichel so he could tack on another goal against his former team. By doing that, the Sabres were able to recover and backcheck to interrupt the play to the point that they were unable to even get a shot away.
“I’d like to see (Hertl) shoot the puck in the net and end the game,” Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said. “That’s what I’d like to see. I think the whole team would like to see that.”
Play turned back the other way and the Sabres got a shot on goal and Hill was forced to freeze the puck. Buffalo used their timeout to design a faceoff play and, wouldn’t you know it, it worked.
Dahlin made up for all the mistakes he felt he made in a big way when he let a slap shot loose from the blue line with Alex Tuch parked in front of Vegas goalie Adin Hill and ripped it past him to make it 3-3 with 13.6 seconds left in the third. Pandemonium unleashed at home in front of a crowd that still has all the heat and hate in the world for Eichel.
“I just think a total lack of respect, probably most of the night,” Cassidy said. “But the way it kind of ended, probably sums that up.”
The game headed to overtime where only one shot on goal was mustered in the five minutes (by Dahlin, no less) and then onto the shootout. There, old friend Victor Olofsson got Vegas ahead after the first round, but Jack Quinn beat Hill with a slick backhand to knot it up. It was then Eichel’s turn to go and as boos and jeers filled the air, he had Luukkonen all but beat. Luukkonen had full extension of his legs to the post, however, and was able to deny Eichel’s attempt to slide it under him and flipped those boos to a roar of cheers.
Alex Tuch’s attempt got Hill faked out hard and he gave Buffalo the advantage before Luukkonen denied Pavel Dorofeyev’s attempt to seal the win. In the past three games, the Sabres didn’t look out of place in beating two of the Western Conference’s best teams in Edmonton and Vegas but also looked like they weren’t in the same league on the road in Detroit when Patrick Kane looked like the player we watched in Chicago for all those years and Alex DeBrincat stunted all over them in a 7-3 laugher.
That kind of Jekyll and Hyde from Buffalo has been all too common this year.
“I think it’s a huge thing we can build on,” McLeod said. “It seems we play a lot better against the good teams in this league. We kind of, I don’t know if it’s we take our foot off the gas or think it’s going to be easy against the, not the bad teams, but the teams that aren’t as high up in the standings. I think if we go in with the mindset we’re playing Vegas or Edmonton every night it’s going to do us better than thinking it’s going to be a point night or a little easier night. Those are huge building block games for us and I think we just got to keep building on them.”
Understandably for fans, hearing that with 17 games left in the season and the Sabres buried in last place in the Eastern Conference is maddening, but we’ve been in the “building the foundation for next season” part of the schedule for a few weeks now, whether anyone wanted to admit it or not. Looking back, so much of this season was set up to have difficulties for the group from the get-go and it’s the sort of thing hindsight could’ve only done so much to help correct. If do-overs were available, everyone would’ve had at least one or two moments they’d have cashed them in, but since that only exists in fantasy, they’ve got to focus on the here and now and make sure that the problems that tripped them up all season aren’t repeated next year.
But winning at home hasn’t been the problem for the Sabres and that they’ve defended home ice reasonably well all year is encouraging. How they’ve been manhandled on the road is a glaring problem and now that they’re headed out on a four-game road swing at Boston, Utah, Minnesota and Winnipeg, playing up to their level should be the first challenge taken on.