BUFFALO – The same Sabres team that recently won 10 times in a 15-game stretch now has trouble executing the simplest of plays. The same team that briefly surged into a playoff spot often can’t stay onside or complete a short pass.
As they illustrated throughout Saturday afternoon, the Sabres, who extended their losing streak to six games (0-4-2), are a complete mess.
In a downright embarrassing effort, they endured a 5-2 shellacking from noted NHL heavyweight Utah Hockey Club.
Don’t let the score fool you. The ugly game felt like a seven-goal blowout.
As Utah scored five unanswered goals, many fans in the crowd of 15,071 in KeyBank Center turned on the Sabres, booing or even mildly chanting for general manager Kevyn Adams to be fired.
It wouldn’t be hard to blame Lindy Ruff if he’s at wit’s end just 27 games into the season. The coach seems stunned by the Sabres’ sudden regression.
“I think you can guess how I’m feeling,” he said. “My job is to get them out of it. That’s my job. That’s on me, to get them out of it, to stay with the process. Don’t deviate. Even just that small play, don’t go offside.”
“I mean, this is mentally one of the weakest games I’ve seen, where you go offside that number of times. You don’t execute the small plays. So if you look at the execution on two of their goals, we could have got it out of our zone. Getting it out of our zone has been a big deal.”
How does a team morph from one of the NHL’s hottest into one so disjointed that players are sometimes one foot offside.
“You can’t explain offside, to a man,” he said. “I mean, maybe a tight one you can, but when you’re offside by a foot or so, it eliminates an opportunity.”
The Sabres, believe it or not, started the game well. Unlike Thursday’s 3-2 overtime loss to the Winnipeg Jets, when their goalie interference challenge failed and rookie Tyson Kozak’s first NHL goal was called back for the same infraction, they received a critical break when goalie interference negated Utah’s early goal.
Kozak, who played his second NHL game, scored one that counted 10:47 into the contest when he charged to the net.
Then the Sabres fell apart again in the second period, allowing three goals. Utah began the afternoon with a minus-14 goal differential in the second period. During one stretch, the Sabres went just over nine minutes without registering a shot on goal.
Defenseman Bowen Byram traces the Sabres’ problem in the middle period to “execution.”
“We have chances,” he said. “We have chances to make easy passes, and somehow we end up fumbling it, kicking it around, and they’re coming back the other way on us. We can’t get fresh guys on the ice. A tired hockey player’s a bad hockey player, so you’re going to have troubles whenever you’re stuck out there for a long time.”
Incredibly, in their last seven games, the Sabres scored zero goals in the second period and allowed nine.
“I think we’re starting games really well and I don’t know if it’s a bit of complacency or what it is, but we’ve got to fix the second periods,” Sabres winger Jason Zucker said. “It seems like we come out in the third and get a bit of that fire back and start playing again.”
By then, it’s often way too late.
Not surprisingly, Ruff traces the lack of execution at any time in games to the Sabres “feeling pressure.”
“Can you handle pressure?” he said. “I’ve talked about being comfortable. I mean, we had a 1-0 lead. We had a 1-0 lead. And we got a break on a goal that got called back that could have gone either way again. It was another one of those ones you’ve got to challenge and you don’t really know.”
Ruff said the emotion of Thursday’s loss, a game in which Kozak seemingly put the Sabres up, did not carry over into Saturday’s contest.
“I’m not going to offer excuses, no,” he said. “This is the NHL. I mean, I look at Kozak, how well he played, and then he gets a goal. (Rookie Jiri Kulich) gets a goal. We need more from other guys.”
Byram said: “Whenever you’re going to get outworked or (out)competed like that, you’re not going to win too many games.”
Kulich scored 17:40 into the third period. Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 23 saves.
Michael Kesselring, Mikhail Sergachev, Nick Schmaltz, Jack McBain and Kevin Stenlund scored for Utah. The Sabres pumped 13 of their 25 shots on goalie Karel Vejmelka in the third period.
It was a pitiful performance.
Minimal effort the entire game.
Was the entire team hungover ?
None of the goals were UPL’s fault.
The 3rd & 4th goals Utah player’s went around Peterka like he wasn’t even there.
Ger Jokiharju out of there and play Ryan Johnson. Jokiharju doesn’t hit or move anyone.