Buffalo’s 4-0 loss at home to Toronto leaves one more game to play before it’s time to answer more than a few questions.
BUFFALO — Tuesday night’s penultimate game for the Buffalo Sabres was not one that would have anyone clamoring to watch the replay unless you’re a hockey coach.
The Sabres lost 4-0 against the Toronto Maple Leafs and it featured some of the classic Sabres-Leafs tropes. Leafs fans did their best to fill the place, although with 17,160 listed as the attendance, good seats were still available. Those who did turn out, roughly 85 percent of them were fans of the blue and white and that’s just the norm for how things have gone in recent years.
It was a road game at home for the Sabres, but it was a game where they played fine just didn’t cash in because Anthony Stolarz was excellent stopping 35 shots for his fourth shutout of the year. Toronto played it style-wise as if it was a playoff game (tight checking, lots of pucks in deep, little room to move) and the Sabres were comfortable enough in their own way to match that.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen played very well despite the score line with 28 saves. One of the four goals was an empty netter and the fourth goal against that came after that saw his teammates fall asleep in front of him to allow Nick Robertson free reign to deke and roof a shot past him, a goal which Lindy Ruff said, “pissed (him) off.”
The Sabres had chances but didn’t convert. The Leafs had chances and did. C’est fini.
“We left a lot of good chances out there,” Ruff said. “Tight game. It was a hard-fought game. We were doing a lot of good stuff against those two top lines, and we were generating enough to win it.”
More from tonight’s loss, a look ahead to Thursday’s season finale, and some college hockey talk because old ties still bind…
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The way the Sabres season is closing out is also proving to summarize their season in a neat, tidy little package. After winning five in a row, they’ve dropped their last four games and three out of four of those losses were winnable games.
“Yeah, I mean, that’s kind of the story of our year,” Jason Zucker said. “So, we’ve got to figure that out. We’ve got to be better, and we’ve got to challenge ourselves individually and as a team and make sure that we’re fixing this come next year.”
The loss at Tampa Bay was a throwback to the middle of the season with the way everything seemed to go wrong, and all mistakes were punished.
But the losses to Columbus, Florida and now Toronto? Games that could’ve been won but weren’t. That in itself is a throwback to many of the games during their season-destroying 0-10-3 run in November and December. During that run they had what were essentially nine one-goal losses and they weren’t able to tear off a stretch of wins to make up for that.
But let’s focus on Tuesday’s game before we get rambling with a season post-mortem for a season that’s not quite over yet.
Zucker was not having it about talking after the game and who can blame him? Team got shutout, it’s another loss in a long season full of them, and the team wasn’t able to punch one in. It’s one game of 82 in a season that just happened to be game 81. He cares, they all care, no one has mailed anything in. It’s, unfortunately, just another game.
The story for the Sabres, however, was Luukkonen.
He’s been the team’s No. 1 all season until James Reimer’s recent run of great play that coincided with Luukkonen going ice cold and fighting it. But his past three starts have been more reminiscent of the player we’ve seen play well. It’s encouraging to see that because as we look ahead to next season, the questions that have and will continue to arise about whether he can be The Guy or not.
He stopped Auston Matthews repeatedly in the game and snuffed out numerous break-ins and odd-man rushes. He nearly got busted swimming away from his crease early which would’ve sent this game spiraling out of control, but that wild moment seemed to get the nerves out of his system and he and his teammates settled down together.
“I feel like I’m playing a little bit deeper again and making the right reads, trusting my own game rather than just kind of playing the puck carrier too much,” Luukkonen said. “Of course, I got bailed out a couple times by our D-men today, so they did a great job today, too. But I feel like the trust in my own game over the couple last games has been way better than before.”
A win against Boston on April 6, a shootout loss in Florida last Saturday, and now Tuesday’s defeat are an exercise in how to focus on the positives for him. With Devon Levi playing well in Rochester, the presumption will be that Luukkonen and Levi will fight for time in the crease in Buffalo next season. That may be a bit presumptuous, but a lot of that will depend on how Levi’s game grows through the Calder Cup Playoffs and how he plays in training camp in September.
There will be another veteran or two in the mix, of course, but the goalie battle in camp next season will be vital to figuring out how things play out. Luukkonen knows what he has to do to make sure the net is his and figuring out how to navigate the recent struggles is a big part of that.
“I don’t want to hide behind the fact that as a team, the game hasn’t been where want it to,” Luukkonen said. “I got to be better, too, and I feel like that’s kind of helps me through those moments, just kind of focus on my own game knowing that I have to be better rather than just finding excuses somewhere else. We’re not going to play perfect every night, so it’s either just kind of focus on your own stuff, and during those stretches I got to be better. And it’s kind of easier to just focus on that, and do the right things next time, than kind of just go all over the place, I guess.”
The best the Sabres can do in the standings now is to finish with 79 points. They had 84 points last season in a year that ended with talk of accountability being needed and all fingers being pointed at Don Granato for the lack of it.
It’s still maddening to think about how the massive losing streak so early on completely derailed the season and how not enough was done to try and give the group a shake when things started to get really rough. Having the owner come in to talk with the team just in time to watch the 11th straight loss was probably the right time for that intervention, but it shouldn’t have been the first thing done either.
The offseason gets a bit tricky.
The lower-body injury Owen Power sustained against Tampa Bay was called a “serious” one by Ruff that if the season were still going, he’d be out for a while. He didn’t want to call it a month-to-month thing, but his tone makes you think it’s close to that. Late-season injuries like that eat into offseason training and if the injury is indeed that bad, it’ll keep Power out of World Championships for Canada. That might not be the worst thing but doing so because of injury is a very bad thing.
Kevyn Adams must find a partner for Power this offseason. Yes, we’ve said this the past two or three years now, but it has to be a major focus. Jacob Bernard-Docker has been fine, but the past few games he’s struggled a little. Bo Byram shouldn’t have to be paired with Power or Rasmus Dahlin and in reality, the left side of the defense is probably a little too set in stone to best fit Byram’s needs and future. That he’s an RFA this summer creates a fascinating situation for Adams to decide upon. Power’s injury could have an effect on what the team does regarding Byram and how they move ahead there.
It was very cool to see Western Michigan win their first national championship in men’s hockey over the weekend. They took down Boston University in the title game in St. Louis at the Frozen Four, a game that proved to be essentially a home game for the Broncos given that Kalamazoo isn’t too far away (five hours drive). First-time champions are always great to see and for a program that’s been around as long as Western Michigan has been to finally win one is great.
Mattias Samuelsson played two seasons at Western Michigan. It was a time he looks back on fondly and the Broncos taking their first title was heartening for him.
“I know how much the hockey team means to the school so it’s pretty cool to see,” Samuelsson said. “I can’t imagine the celebration they’re having.”
In Samuelsson’s two years at WMU (2018 to 2020) he played for former NHL head coach Andy Murray, but during his second season, the Broncos current head coach Pat Ferschweiler was an assistant under Murray. In 2021, Ferschweiler took over as head coach and in four years, he led them to their first Frozen Four and national title.
The Sabres were playing the Florida Panthers in Sunrise when the puck dropped between WMU and BU, but Samuelsson said he got to see the final 10 minutes of the game on his phone on the plane ride to Tampa afterward. Watching the school he played for win the biggest game in program history was special.
“It was an extremely fun place to play college hockey, so just to see them take the next step,” Samuelsson said. “It’s pretty nice for them to win this and as they’re going into a new arena, I’d say it moves the program in the right direction. I’m happy for them and excited to see what it comes to.”
In a more regional kind of story, long-time head coach at RIT, Wayne Wilson, announced a week ago that he’s retiring. He became the Tigers’ head coach in 1999 and helped establish them as a force in Division-III and then guided them into Division-I hockey with the highest point in 2010 when they qualified for the NCAA Tournament, upset No. 1 seed Denver and advanced to the Frozen Four in Detroit.
Wilson was one many players from the 1984 Bowling Green national championship team that went on to long careers in the game. He was the focus of one of my first stories at The Athletic when I was brought on board the site and it was a thrill to speak with so many people who offered insight into him as a player, person and coach.
The impact Wilson had at RIT was immense and for a school as small as RIT is to wind up in the spotlight in college hockey at all was remarkable. That he’s been able to coach players who went on to careers in pro hockey shows the impact he had there.
“A really great person and a great coach,” Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman Chris Tanev said. “He did tremendous things for RIT and the hockey program. I think anyone that played for Wayne will tell you how good a person he is and how dedicated he was to the school.”
Tanev played one season at RIT before he signed as a free agent with the Vancouver Canucks. Wilson discovered Tanev playing junior hockey in Toronto and brought him in at RIT. In that one season, the Tigers’ Frozen Four season, Tanev had 10 goals and 18 assists in helping them advance to the national semifinals.
“He gave me a lot of opportunity right when I got to school,” Tanev said. “I was put in key situations, and he was able to build my confidence. But also, he would make me feel like I could play, and I could just be a really good player there. As the year progressed, I got better and better. Obviously, we had a great year the year I was there.”
Wilson retiring after more than 40 years in hockey is a moment for fans in Western New York to sit back and appreciate what he was able to do in Rochester, but for Tanev, he’s happy to see his former coach get to do it his way.
“I spoke to him after and it’s never a good time to leave, really, but he just felt like it was the right time to leave,” Tanev said. “He’s got some young grandkids that will love spending more time with him. He grew that program so much over the decades and really did such a great job.”
Former Cincinnati Cyclones head coach Matt Thomas was tapped to take over at RIT following Wilson’s retirement. Thomas coached the Cyclones while they were the ECHL affiliate for the Sabres and had a hand in helping Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen develop after he left OHL Sudbury. He’s been an assistant for the Providence Bruins the past four seasons but played his college hockey at RIT from 1994 to 1998 under Eric Hoffberg, the Tigers head coach previous to Wilson.
The six degrees of Sabres connections are wild, aren’t they?