The Sabres suffered another loss in which they got down early and were forced to play catch up yet again. Despite the collective youth and injuries, they need a shake.
The Buffalo Sabres demise on Wednesday night in Denver came via a script that’s become a bit too familiar.
Colorado piled on three goals in rapid succession in the first period and forced the Sabres to work from behind to try and come away with a win, or at the very least a loser point. Despite playing a great second period in which they came away without a goal, there wasn’t a comeback to be had.
The continuance of seeing the Sabres fall behind in games is well beyond the problematic stage at this point. It’s been such a regular occurrence that when they do grab the first lead of the game it’s a genuine surprise. Teams are never perfect and rarely do even the best teams in the league have every game start out the way they’d like, but the Sabres are not one of the best teams in the league despite the bevy of young talent and the poor starts lead to a lot of questions surrounding the players and coaches alike.
The poor starts are just one of the issues. The power play, after looking like it was about to turn the corner a couple weeks ago, has gone quiet once again and the hope is that with Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch back that it’ll only be a moment of time before things start to click. The Sabres don’t have that kind of time. They need a jolt of some kind and where that comes from has to happen soon, or else the hole they’re in when it comes to the playoff race will be too deep to climb out of.
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Following the loss to Colorado, the Sabres have played 30 games. With 52 left to play and two more on the road trip, they’ll return home before Christmas with 50 games to go. They’re rocking a .450 points percentage and have 12 wins. It’s not great!
While they’re four points out of the second wild card as of this writing, they’ve played more games than almost every other team they’re trying to climb over in the standings which means those teams have games in hand. If Buffalo is going to get into the playoffs, they’ve got to get serious right now and with the continued up and down performances that means finding a way to get a fire lit.
Don Granato has been clear since last season that he wants this young group to feel what it means to be involved in a playoff race, to know what that stress and pressure is like because that leads to growth. That also helps him and everyone else find out who’s got the ability to rise up when the situation gets hottest.
They’ve had to navigate losing Thompson and Tuch for stretches of the season, they’ve been without Jack Quinn all year, and now they could be looking at losing Jeff Skinner after he was flattened by Nathan MacKinnon Wednesday night and left the game. If Skinner is going to miss time, the moment for GM Kevyn Adams to make a move and introduce a spark to this lineup is well at hand.
Sure, Skinner going out could mean recalling Isak Rosén from Rochester, it could mean holding steady until Quinn is ready to play (and that time is coming soon enough given he’s practicing with the team) but where they are in the standings and the need to get things steady and consistent calls for a move with a bit more heft to it. Putting the pressure of getting the team straightened out and on the right path on either a rookie’s shoulders or on the back of someone returning from a ruptured Achilles’ tendon is asking a lot out of them, too much really.
Oddly enough, Skinner’s injury (and we won’t know how serious it is or isn’t until later this afternoon when the team practices in Vegas) got me thinking back to when Skinner was injured in 2019 and then GM Jason Botterill acquired Michael Frolik to help steady the lineup while he was out.
Granted, that was with Ralph Krueger as coach and we all know how he felt about Skinner eventually, but at the time, replacing a guy who scored 40 a year before that with someone who wasn’t a scorer and was meant to steady their defensive play and PK. Losing Skinner now would require a substantially different move to be made given Skinner is one of their leading goal scorers and top power play scorer as well.
Answering a Skinner absence with rushing Quinn back or taking the slow play by getting Jordan Greenway back into the lineup (since he’s due to return soon-ish) would do a couple of things:
A) It would send the message that it’s on everyone there now to get it right and find the consistency they’ve been looking for all season long themselves. For a young team, this approach makes sense to a degree, although losses piling up the way that they have can have the opposite effect.
The one thing we know about the Sabres is that they ride the psychological highs and lows very hard in-game. That points to confidence and a team that’s not winning consistently lacks it. That’s where a player like Zach Benson has been such a breath of fresh air because he seems immune to such roller coaster rides. He plays with high confidence and swagger no matter the situation. He’s got that kind of dog in him to just go out and do what he’s got to do whether they’re up two or down two.
This is where making a deal for a player with that sort of attitude to add that personality to the group could be a big help. It doesn’t need to be a guy who hits like a truck, but it should be a player who wouldn’t think twice about committing to what he does best regardless of situation.
B) Making no move at all and keeping it to the guys who are in-house would also increase the temperature from the outside on Granato and Adams and the rest of the coaching staff to get it right… or else, and the temperature is already getting up there.
Adams and Granato have been united on the front when it came to doing this rebuild the right way and making sure they didn’t make the same mistakes previous regimes did when it came to pushing too quickly or not pushing at all. But this group right now is in a point where a push of some kind is needed.
The move in the offseason was to strengthen the defense with Erik Johnson and Connor Clifton and that hasn’t happened as of yet. Johnson has provided some veteran guidance to a very young defense corps and that’s great behind the scenes. Clifton hasn’t played well, something he’s told us about and how he’s frustrated it hasn’t gone right yet. He’s showed some improvement, but now we’ve seen Ryan Johnson jump up from Rochester and look like a guy who belongs and the already crowded house they had on defense is even more loaded with Ryan Johnson and Jacob Bryson giving them eight guys back there.
Quinn’s injury didn’t lead to them making a move in free agency because they still had Victor Olofsson (whom they were trying to trade but cooled on it after Quinn went down) and they wanted to keep the door open to their prospects in case someone made the case to stick around. Benson took that opportunity and ran with it, which was good, but he’s 18 years old and it shouldn’t have to fall on his shoulders to put the Sabres over the top. This can also apply to Rosén, Jiri Kulich, or Matt Savoie as well.
The summer can only be re-litigated in online and bar room discussion, but not on the roster. That’s where it falls on Adams to address what’s missing with this group.
We know, making trades is hard. There are cap situations elsewhere, there’s in-room chemistry, there’s all of those things to consider, but the Sabres have any and all things at their disposal to help make a deal happen. They have the cap space to either add money or eat money. They have prospects and picks. They also have the need to get things fixed up in a way that will get them back into the playoff race in a real sustainable way.