A second straight Sabres loss with seven goals allowed was an exhibition of growing pains in full view.
BUFFALO — It was a fascinating confluence of teams from different conferences in similar positions each coming off a 7-0 whooping on Sunday. The Buffalo Sabres took theirs from the Boston Bruins and the Nashville Predators took it from the New York Rangers.
Both teams are on the fringes of the playoffs and both teams desperately needed something to feel good about after those beatdowns. A classic “something’s got to give” battle wound up in the Sabres continuing to take it on the chin allowing seven goals again, this time in a 7-3 loss.
The similarity in how Tuesday’s loss played out with others they’ve had in the past month or would be concerning. Goaltending came up small in some parts while the team defense was porous and turnover-prone in others all while the offense struggled to put passes together, never mind scoring goals.
Defensive breakdowns had the look of a team desperate to not make a mistake only to create a big one in the process. Goaltending errors, even those disallowed, showed why some of the defensive breakdowns occurred in the first place. No one is blameless, no one is happy, but no one is giving in despite the brutal scorelines.
If the results were a bit more polite, you’d say the Sabres are in a rut, but having allowed 38 goals in the past seven games it’s more like a chasm.
A more veteran team performing like this would have all of us scouting out who might be coaching or managing the team next year. Instead, it’s the youngest team in the NHL that’s in their first playoff race with the added angst of a decade-plus absence from the postseason looming over the entire situation. Stress, pressure, and, as Don Granato has explained it, anxiety have replaced the confidence and swagger that accompanied his team for most of the season.
Growing pains like this hurt like a bastard.
“You have to have the ability to keep things in the game simple, and that’s what we’re going to learn through this,” Granato said. “How to keep it simple. You just need to get through the neutral zone, you don’t need to make a perfect play through the neutral zone. You just need to get depth, you don’t need to make a play through sticks. So, the resolve is you’ll learn to keep the game simpler, you’ll learn the greater respect for how to keep the game simple, and it will be situational awareness. When you have a team that’s a growing team, that’s what they have to learn, situational awareness.
“I stand here with conviction knowing that we will be better through this.”
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Understandably, through the haze of the spate of losses, it’s difficult to find a path ahead through what’s been witnessed since essentially the beginning of February. Wins haven’t been consistent, injuries have been more common, and the play more erratic. In a vacuum, they’re all the earmarks of a young team. And, well, it’s what they are.
“But what about Kyle Okposo!? And Craig Anderson!? They’ve been through this! I thought they were leaders!”
They are, but they are their own players and don’t control how their teammates play. Think about it like they’re the older siblings. They’ve lived through all kinds of situations and have all those experiences to draw from for inspiration and instruction. They can tell their teammates anything they want to know and provide the guidance needed to succeed, but they can’t live it for them. It’s like when we’re told by our own authority figures in life about the perils of situations and how best to handle them, but you don’t know how you’re going to react until you’re actually in it. It’s the whole book smart vs. street smart thing except it’s professional hockey and what it’s like to be in a playoff race.
They can provide the wisdom, but nothing teaches better than experience and that experience is what they’re dealing with now and it’s brand new and they look brand new in dealing with it. Should we expect better? Should we expect more? Are they better than what they’ve shown of late or is this what they were always supposed to be?
“It’s the same team right here, it’s just we’re at a different point in the season now, we’re facing adversity, and we’re going through things this group hasn’t gone through before,” Thompson said. “So, it’s new for everyone. It’s not an excuse, but it’s something we’re going to learn and grow together.”
They’re definitely better than they’ve shown, we’ve seen that. But when it comes to what we should expect, hell if I know. I’ve covered the Sabres since 2013 and the NHL since 2008 and a team with the kind of makeup this team does, I’d have no idea what to expect. There are plenty of teams I’ve seen since my start in all this that when a season started or a playoff race started to reach the finish line that I thought I knew better, but I definitely did not.
Expectations for the Sabres this season was they would be better than they were last season and they’re four points shy of that mark with 12 games to play. Feeling pretty good they’ll meet and exceed that mark despite all the gloom of late. The thought was if they hung around in a conversation for the playoffs for most of the season that would be the kind of progress you’d like to see out of what was going to be a young team. They’re virtually out of it now, but they’re still technically in it with a few weeks left. Seems to be just what was expected.
Of course, those expectations changed midway through because of the success they had for most of the season. And that’s fair to change the view, but it’s the box score view of how it finishes that will stand out in the end and it’ll look like they did what everyone figured they would and if they meet the expectations that will be in place next season (make the playoffs and see what happens) the build-up they’ve made in the past few years will look linear and logical.
But the play’s the thing, isn’t it? Not in the Shakespearean sense (although you could make that into a bit of a simile if you want to make a parallel between Hamlet and the Sabres) but rather it’s how it all plays out that matters. The full ebbs and flows and the flow of this season could have it end the way last season began, with frustrating, out of sync play and a lot of inconsistency. Ending on a high note always means optimism, but if you think of this Sabres team as being in the same spot as last season’s New Jersey Devils, there’s reason to have optimism things will improve.
Those Devils had injuries like mad to key players Jack Hughes (missed 33 games) and Dougie Hamilton (missed 20 games), as well as to goalies Jonathan Bernier and Mackenzie Blackwood. They had four different goalies play double-digit games and the best of them was Bernier who had a .902 save percentage in just 10 games. Everyone else (and they had seven goalies play last season) was below .900 for the year.
A young team with key injuries and bad goaltending? Interesting occurrence. They adjusted over the summer by trading for goalie Vitek Vanecek, added savvy veterans Erik Haula from Boston in a trade for Pavel Zacha as well as defenseman John Marino from Pittsburgh for Ty Smith, and signed Ondřej Palát as a free agent. They also added Timo Meier in a trade at the deadline and they could wind up winning the Metropolitan Division over Carolina. They pushed when they needed to in the offseason to improve the lineup and stayed patient with Lindy Ruff and now they could be the team to come out of the Eastern Conference and go to the Stanley Cup Final.
The key thing for them is Hughes, Nico Hischier, Jesper Bratt, Yegor Sharangovich, and Dawson Mercer all got to grow together and go through the lows and hone their skills as a team. For two years, those guys took it on the chin with losses galore, but GM Tom Fitzgerald tweaked and added to the group when it was needed and seized on it when things took off this year. Kevyn Adams won’t follow his methods by the letter, but I can bet he took notes on how it’s working in Newark.
This is all just a long, roundabout way of saying that witnessing this kind of play isn’t a stunning development, it’s kind of what they have been all season, just that this is the uglier end of inconsistency. It doesn’t define who they are as a team, it just leaves the recent memories feeling bad. It also doesn’t define Granato as a coach or Adams as a GM. It’s all new for everyone, even if it doesn’t feel new to everyone else.
The conviction with which Granato speaks about how things will pay off is believable even if the evidence at the moment goes against it. Fans have been sold plenty of lines from plenty of men before him that wound up hollow, but this time there is evidence what he says is true and he believes in the players and in himself to bring this team out of this chasm and into the brighter days that feel destined to come.
“You’re going to have doubt. It’s not unnatural to have doubt,” Granato said. “They care, they have pride. If they didn’t care, we would probably be in less of a situation than this. They wouldn’t care. It affects them. Everything affects them. The puck going in their net affects them. They feel like they let people down. So they’re not within themselves, they’re not focused.
“Obviously the position I’m in is a leadership position. You can lead. You’ve got to help them get through it. You’ve got to give them the confidence that they’re going to get through it. And I can’t give them the confidence if I can’t give them the clarity. And we will get the clarity. They will get it. That’s how we got to where we were, and it will happen.”