OTTAWA, Ontario \u2013 Clinching the playoffs will have to wait, as the Buffalo Sabres lost 4-1 to the Ottawa Senators on Thursday at Canadian Tire Centre.<\/p>\n
Tied 1-1 after 40 minutes, the Sabres had their first chance to officially secure a postseason berth, but Lars Eller scored the eventual game winner for Ottawa with 14:05 remaining. The Senators, who are the thick of the wild card race, added two late empty netters to end any hope of a comeback and move into playoff position, themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey took over the game, last two periods,\u201d coach Lindy Ruff said. \u201cI thought they outskated, they outcompeted. Their desperation level was just higher than ours, it\u2019s simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ottawa was without several key defensemen and also lost Tyler Kleven to a first-period injury. With that in mind, Ruff explained, Buffalo hoped to take advantage of the Senators\u2019 five remaining blueliners, two of which are recent AHL call-ups.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we got a little stubborn,\u201d said forward Jason Zucker. \u201cI don\u2019t think we did a good enough job getting pucks behind them and really pressing their D.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a low-event game in both directions, especially early, as the teams combined for just 10 shots in a scoreless first period. Buffalo had consecutive power plays \u2013 Tage Thompson drilled the post on the second one \u2013 but couldn\u2019t cash in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we shot the puck enough,\u201d Zucker said of those man advantages. \u201cI think we had a couple good looks, but ultimately, on any power play in the NHL, you can pass the puck around the outside for two minutes and look really good. You don\u2019t stress their D, you don\u2019t manipulate their defensemen and their forwards, put them in tough spots, get pucks on the net, you\u2019re not going to score.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mattias Samuelsson finally broke through in the second period to get the Sabres on the board. Off a Thompson faceoff win, the defenseman tossed a shot from up high and beat Linus Ullmark for his first goal in a month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA, Ontario \u2013 Clinching the playoffs will have to wait, as the Buffalo Sabres lost 4-1 to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":{"0":"post-578879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ottawa","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-ottawa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}