BUFFALO – Don’t let the final score fool you. The Sabres’ 4-0 loss in Thursday’s season opener to the New York Rangers was closer than the score might indicate.
The Sabres trailed by one goal with less than six minutes remaining. Following a weak first period, they pumped 26 shots on Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin over the final 40 minutes.
Not that any of that mattered to the disgruntled capacity crowd of 19,070. Fans packed KeyBank Center to celebrate a new season and see a team that owns an NHL-record 14-year playoff drought start to find its way.
Instead, they watched the Sabres lose by four goals and get shut out. Enough said.
In the final minutes, many of the spectators who stuck around booed the announcement of the Sabres’ next home game Monday afternoon against the Colorado Avalanche.
Fresh off an odd training camp in which the Sabres experienced a rash of injuries, they started the regular season with a few surprise absences, most notably winger Zach Benson.
Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said Benson watched the game from hospital bed after a puck hit him in the face during Wednesday’s practice.
Benson had his cut repaired and returned to the session, then spent Wednesday night in the hospital.
“That little cut on his face turned into something bigger,” Ruff said. “Crazy. I mean, just a crazy incident. I won’t go into any more detail, but that’s where he watched the game from tonight, and we didn’t really expect that.”
Ruff said he talked to Benson, whom he expects will be discharged today, on his drive to the rink.
“He said, ‘I’d like to get out of my hospital bed and come play,’” he said.
Ruff said “just chalk it up to bizarre stuff that’s been happening to us in the preseason.”
The Sabres, who recently lost No. 1 goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen to lower-body injury, also played without defenseman Owen Power, who Ruff said has been sick. Then late in the game, Josh Norris, their oft-injured No. 1 center, left with an upper-body injury after taking a faceoff.
“He didn’t finish the game, so I’m going to say that’s not a good sign,” Ruff said of Norris’ status.
The Sabres displayed signs as they closed last season on a 12-7-1 run they had learned how to play a better brand of hockey that would generated consistent success. Clearly, the confidence they generated over those final weeks carried into the new season.
They don’t want to let one night ruin that.
“Yeah, we have 81 left,” Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin said. “We just got to keep growing. We have something really good going on here. If we just got one (goal), the game would’ve looked way different.”
The difference, Dahlin said, was Shesterkin, who made 37 stops in a low-chance game.
“Hell of a goalie,” he said. You got to put the puck in. The whole game was different. We had our chances. We had a could’ve had a couple on the power play, too.”
The power play, which ranked 24th last season, had four attempts.
Alexis Lafreniere scored 11:43 into the game, converting a chance in the crease past Sabres goalie Alex Lyon, who looked sharp early and made 29 saves, including 15 in the first period.
“I think he gave us a chance to win a hockey game,” Ruff said. “… He was sharp.”
Lyon said after the first period, the Sabres “played a really strong brand of hockey.”
“I think, honestly, we played a winning brand of hockey,” he said. “So I think it’s something to latch onto. … We just need to continue to be level-headed and move forward very rationally and try to improve a little bit at a time.”
Lyon said the Sabres’ played a playoff style of game.
“I think getting pucks in deep, making their D turn, playing that grinding game is very difficult to deal with over a 60-minute game, and I thought that we did a good job with that,” he said. “I mean, we limited them. Again, they have some really high-end talent, so they’re going to get some opportunities.
“But you can just play consistent and force them to make a mistake, I think that’s a winning brand of hockey in 2025, and I think that we did a good job of that.”
