BUFFALO, N.Y. — For a team that’s been guilty of getting high on their own accomplishments, something they’ve been guilty of doing even earlier this season, the Buffalo Sabres have put into practice the art of not being satisfied.
The Sabres 5-3 win at home over the Anaheim Ducks, who are now 1-9-1 in their past 11 games, was their 13th win in the past 14 games. It was a game in which they had a 3-0 lead in the third period and then a 4-1 lead that turned into a 4-3 lead in the span of 1:10. All it took was 3:56 to go from cruising to victory to sweating it out, but a Josh Norris empty-net goal thanks to the efforts of Alex Tuch sealed it up with 11 seconds to play.
A win, a sigh of relief, and a feeling of annoyed gratification.
“That’s on us,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “We weren’t good enough. We let our goalie down. That is not up to par for our club. Our club can’t accept that. We’re a better club than that. We played well to that point. What we did in that last five minutes isn’t good enough.”
Burning what was looking like a shutout down into an anxious nailbiter is enough to make any coach pissed off but looking to the players and how they respond to these kinds of outcomes is where you get a better idea of where a team is at with their focus.
“Obviously we’d like to be a little cleaner, not really give them any life,” Tage Thompson said. “But I think we’ve gotten ourselves to a point this year where we’re comfortable in those kinds of games and comfortable closing them out. But yeah, with that being said, we don’t want to make that a habit. So, moving forward, just got to clean that up a little bit.”
Thompson was once again one of the focal points of the Sabres offense. His goal in the second period gave them a 2-0 lead, but it doesn’t happen without Josh Doan picking Ducks forward Tim Washe’s pocket before he escaped the zone and dishing to Peyton Krebs. Krebs found Thompson parked at the far post for a tap-in and his 22nd goal of the season. Although Thompson gets the goal, it all happens because of Doan.
“That’s just determination,” Ruff said. “That’s not quitting on a play. That’s tracking back, getting under his stick. It was just a great play. There’s nothing too much more you can say about it. Just effort alone is A-plus.”
Thompson also set up Bo Byram’s 10th goal of the season at 7:09 of the third period from behind the net and caught Byram blitzing down the center lane for the goal that made it 3-0. With just under 13 minutes to go and a three-goal lead, that ought to be enough, right? Well…
“We get to talk about a couple big mistakes and sloppy play after a win instead of after a loss,” Ruff said. “That’s the good part of this and knowing that our standard is a lot higher than this. If we’re going to accept that standard, (it’s) not good enough.”
Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen had a phenomenal game and came away with 31 saves. Of course the third period shakiness falls on his shoulders as well, but a lot of it came while his teammates got scrambling around in their own zone and even were guilty of deflecting a Leo Carlsson shot past him that made it 4-2. Self-sabotage when unintended doesn’t hurt as badly when you win.
“At the end I need to come up with a couple saves to keep it more calm,” Luukkonen said. “There’s three goals, I know, I don’t want to say they’re my fault necessarily, but I got to play those better. There’s things I got to clean up, too. Three goals is too much in the third. I feel like as a team we’ve got to do better, but overall, I felt good playing tonight.”
The other guy who helped keep the game afloat for Buffalo was Jack Quinn. He had two goals and coming up with those helped end a nine-game drought. After having just one goal in 19 games, sniping two past Lukáš Dostál had to put his mind at ease. After all, goal scorers who aren’t scoring are usually stressing out and even though he’d been piling up chances, those tend to only look good to those who dig deep into the numbers.
“Sometimes goal scorers go through a little stretch like that, but it was good,” Ruff said. “He’s working hard, he’s skating well, he’s in on a good number of chances, so that’s big for us.”
Ruff has been outwardly positive about what Quinn’s been doing while he hasn’t been scoring and he’s been supportive of him in a big way this season. Quinn had his ups and downs last season while both he and J-J Peterka adjusted to life under Ruff, but we’ve seen the Sabres coach go out of his way to back up Quinn this season. While the coach may often guide with some gruff, he’s shown how well he can work the other side of things as well.
“It goes a long way, his confidence in me,” Quinn said. “You don’t feel the pressure as much. He believes in me, so it’s nice to be able to just go out there and play my game.”
If this kind of third period were a one-off kind of thing you could shrug it off in a way that wouldn’t be harmful, but this was third straight game in which things got a bit too loose and way too dodgy in the third period.
Buffalo had a 4-0 lead 6:13 into the third period before the Vancouver Canucks rattled off three straight before a Doan empty-net goal cooled things off. Two nights ago in New York City, the Sabres entered the third period with a 3-1 on the Rangers before Vincent Trocheck scored 51 seconds in to cut it to 3-2. They hunkered down and blocked shots and fended off the Rangers onslaught before Peyton Krebs took a double-minor for high-sticking with 5:36 to play in the period. Mattias Samuelsson sniping a shot short side on Jonathan Quick shorthanded 14 seconds into the four-minute penalty turned the temperature down instantly and a Ryan McLeod empty-net goal made it look like a breeze in a 5-2 decision.
They’re not picture-perfect wins, but they’re wins nonetheless and the Sabres need every single one of them to maintain their spot in the playoff picture since no one else in the Eastern Conference wants to lose games or not go to overtime. Call these games practice for later in the year and the playoffs if you want to, but they’re necessary win-or-else games right now.
“We’ve gotten some confidence being in games like those, some experience closing them out, now,” Thompson said. “The energy on the bench, there’s no panic in that situation where that might have been the case previously. But I thought we did a really good job, even after they scored two there, just kind of resetting and trying to go about the next shift.”
The Sabres may very well be growing up before our eyes and the fact they’re not completely falling apart in these kinds of games speaks to that in a way, but the dissatisfaction in how they’re closing out games like Saturday’s against Anaheim shows they’ve taken all those lessons from the past to heart.
“That’s another learning curve for us that we’re sorting out right now and learning that we have to keep our foot on the gas pedal in times like that,” Doan said. “We’ve been fortunate enough to have big enough leads, so it doesn’t cost us, but I think it’s you’d rather learn from it now than learn from it when you’re up one or two and it costs you a couple of points. It’s one of those things we’ll take a look at obviously and see how to defend that better.”