OTTAWA — The Buffalo Sabres’ league-record playoff drought lives to see another day.
The Sabres simply needing a win in any fashion to clinch their first playoff berth since 2011. Before the game, the Sabres talked about treating it like any other game. They came into the day tied for first in the Atlantic Division and tied for first place in the Eastern Conference. With those bigger goals in mind, clinching seemed like a formality.
But the Sabres didn’t play with the urgency of a team that had a chance to lock in a playoff spot. The Ottawa Senators are desperately clinging to the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference and had no interest in the Sabres turning their arena into a celebration zone. After playing a tight 1-1 game through two periods, the Senators pulled away with a Lars Eller goal and two empty-netters to hand the Sabres a 4-1 loss.
“They took over the game,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said after the game. “Last two periods, I thought they outskated, they outcompeted. Their desperation level was just higher. It’s as simple as that.”
This has become a bit more common for the Sabres over the last couple of weeks. The Sabres are now 2-2-2 in their last six games after going 12-1 in their first 13 games coming out of the Olympic break.
Meanwhile, the Senators came into Thursday on a three-game losing streak and were playing without top defensemen Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot. They’ve used 12 defensemen since the Olympic break because of injuries, and Tyler Kleven left the game early, so they played most of the game with five.
But the Senators badly needed these two points to stay alive in the playoff race.
“Obviously for them, every point matters with how tight it is for those wild-card spots,” Sabres defenseman Mattias Samuelsson said. “Every game is going to be like this and if we want to be able to do anything in the postseason, we’re going to have to find ways to win different ways and we definitely didn’t do that tonight.”
Samuelsson said he thought the Sabres were “too cute” and didn’t play a direct enough game. Jason Zucker felt the same way and thought the Sabres made life too easy on the Senators’ defensemen by not attacking the net enough. The Sabres finished the game with just four high-danger chances at five-on-five and didn’t have a single one in the third period. They’ve only had three games this season where they’ve generated fewer high-danger chances at even strength.
“We were passing up a lot of shots and looking for the next best play,” Zucker said. “There’s times for that. There’s times for that next play because somebody has to run out of position and the play is available. I think we need to have a bit of a net-first shooting mentality, and a lot of times that’s what opens up the passing plays.”
Zucker blamed himself for not being more vocal on the bench when the game started to slip away. This night could have ended with a celebration and a weight off the franchise. That moment is still coming at some point. But Zucker, one of the team’s most experienced players, is recognizing the need for urgency beyond just clinching.
“Everyone is dying for points right now,” Zucker said. “Everyone needs them, including us. Last I checked, we’re not in the playoffs yet. We have a lot of work to do. We need to shore up a lot of what we’re doing. I don’t think we have any panic in our room but we have some stuff that we need to have a little bit more urgency towards.”
That will start with a practice on Friday afternoon in Virginia and a game on Saturday night against another desperate team, the Washington Capitals. That game will present another chance for the Sabres to clinch a playoff spot with a win. If the Detroit Red Wings lose to the New York Rangers on Saturday afternoon, the Sabres could clinch before puck drop. The league hasn’t yet announced the official clinching scenarios for Friday and Saturday, but the Sabres will enter the weekend watching the standings.
“I think that’s every game right now,” Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen said. “We want to clinch the playoff spot, kind of make the whole thing real for us.”
1. The Sabres had a 1-0 lead late in the second period when Rasmus Dahlin had a careless turnover trying to flip the puck out of the zone. The Senators then had a quick passing play from Brady Tkachuk to Dylan Cozens, who got behind Dahlin for a redirect goal. That blunder was when the game started to turn in Ottawa’s favor.
2. Logan Stanley and Tkachuk had some unfinished business from a hit Stanley threw when Winnipeg was in Ottawa earlier this year. Stanley and Tkachuk fought in the first period, and Stanley handled him without much issue. Tkachuk got a few late shots in, but Stanley had the upper hand. That seemed to calm Tkachuk down. He’s typically a bit more rambunctious than he was in this game.
3. Josh Norris got thrown out of the game with just over a minute left when he got a misconduct for “abuse of officials.” The refs didn’t call a single penalty in the third period before that, despite some obvious opportunities to do so. The Sabres had bigger issues in this game, but this was as loosely called a game as we’ve seen the Sabres play all season.
4. Zach Metsa was on the ice for a goal against for the first time since October. That was a stunning run, aided by the fact that Metsa wasn’t playing a lot of minutes and Buffalo’s goalies had an extremely high save percentage when he was on the ice. But it came to an end on the go-ahead goal when Lars Eller got a deflection in front of the net.
Metsa also got 2:30 of ice time on the penalty kill in this game, another sign that Ruff is trying to expand his role to see what he can handle.
5. Ruff did not like either of the empty-net goals. On one, the Sabres dumped the puck in and somehow still allowed a breakaway the other way. And on the other, the Sabres had three guys in the corner battling against one Senators player and still didn’t come away with the puck.
“I thought they were better than us, simple as that,” Ruff said. “Their compete was better, they won more battles.”