Early turnovers put the Sabres in an early hole they couldn’t climb out of in a 3-1 loss to the Red Wings.
DETROIT — In the Buffalo Sabres two visits to Detroit’s Little Caesar’s Arena this season, both in the final weeks of the season, it may as well have been the Ides of March.
Twice the Sabres faced the Red Wings in their building with chances to make their case stronger to lurch into the playoff race in a last dash for the final wild card spot and twice they’ve left Michigan on the wrong end of the decision.
This time around, the Sabres desperately needed a win just to keep the slimmest of hopes alive but were done in by early turnovers (one from Jack Quinn, another a miscommunication on a line change with Zack Benson) that became goals against from Lucas Raymond and, of course, Patrick Kane.
“It was another mistake that looked identical,” Sabres coach Don Granato said. “No one wants that to happen and that happened twice. In the postgame, you can sum it up and those were obviously big mistakes.”
That 2-0 hole became 3-0 on a Dylan Larkin power play goal and with it an already hard game to win on the road became damned near impossible to win.
“We’re making a playoff push, they’re making a playoff push, and they came out with a lot more intensity than we did,” Alex Tuch said. “We didn’t keep it simple, obviously. Turned a couple pucks over, but we’ve got to be able to help the guys out. (If) they do make a turnover or something, we’ve got to just push to help them out as much as possible and if we give up one quick, we have to just say, ‘Let’s be smart about it.’
“We can’t go down 3-0 against a team like that. They’re pretty good defensively, they’re going to shut it down. They’ve got a good goaltender in net so we were unable to climb out of that hole.”
More on the potential end of the playoff dream in Detroit with four games left to play.
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That the Sabres on two different occasions could’ve helped to trade places with the Red Wings in this shmozzle of a playoff race and were unable to is something that will stick with this group for a while.
When Tuch and Tage Thompson were asked about that cruel twist of fate, their summaries were the same.
“It sucks,” Thompson said.
No more, no less, nothing else needed to be said.
“It sucks, plain and simple just sucks,” Tuch said. “Honestly. There’s no sugarcoating it… We had multiple chances (this season). If you can’t win more than three in a row, it’s probably not going to be in the playoffs. That’s tough. We’re going to keep pushing, you never know what will happen. I’ve seen crazier things and we’re going to keep pushing. We’re going to move onto Dallas and we’re going to play a good, hard game and we’re going to focus on everything in our control and this locker room and move on.
“It definitely sucks losing to the Red Wings, a team we’re chasing. A team we know we’ve gotten the better of this season before, too. We had the chance to impose our will on them and just didn’t keep it simple early and we just got ourselves into a hole we couldn’t dig ourselves out.”
Being undone by turnovers is maybe the cruelest part. That they came from younger players makes it, to a point, understandable, but also highlights how having a group that’s not exactly been in this sort of position before against a team with enough veterans who can seize upon that kind of relative inexperience makes it so painful in the end.
“You’ve got to learn from it,” Granato said. “Unfortunate experience gained. It’s hard when anyone does it, but (it’s) experience gained.”
The mood in the room and from Granato after this loss was bitterly grim. Bitter because it was the summation of how this season has gone and because it was yet another opportunity to build off of an important win and rally forth to string points together in the standings. It’s occurred so often this season that you’d almost be numb to it, but all of these missed opportunities have stacked up on each other and it’s visible in the players’ demeanor that they know the chance was there all year to right the ship and get back into the playoff race in a more serious way.
But this season is so much more different than last season was. As exciting as it seemed last season with all the goals scored, this year’s Sabres were a better all-around team. Yes, they got the goaltending they lacked so severely last season, but they’re a better defensive team this year by far as well. We’ve hammered on the power play being the bane of their season numerous times and it’s ironic that their lone goal on Sunday came on the power play from Thompson.
An occasional old problem that returned on Sunday was the lack of net traffic and players around the goal to make it a tougher day for Alex Lyon. They had people there late, particularly when they pulled Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen for the extra skater, but there was very little of that for the majority of the game. Red Wings players blocked a lot of shots as well, but there were often too many looks where the shooter didn’t have anyone near the net to disrupt the situation.
With four games to go, the next one in Dallas against a Stars team that looks like a machine right now, seeing what the battle level will be in that game will be curious to see. Sunday’s loss to Detroit was deeply deflating and if there was a hangover from that into Tuesday’s game, you’d almost understand. Still, this is a group that hasn’t given up in any way this season. Discouraged at times in-game, sure, but full-on punting and looking like total garbage? No. Not that the distinguishment between those two means a whole heck of a lot to the fans.
It’s almost all over but the shouting, but there’s a lot more shouting that awaits as the season winds down and the offseason begins in full imminently.