The Buffalo Sabres\u2019 6-3 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday night wasn\u2019t as ugly as the final score would indicate, but it\u2019s tough for this team to take much solace in that.<\/p>\n
Despite clawing back from an early 2-0 deficit and coming close to making it a 4-4 game late in regulation, the Sabres ultimately succumbed to the inevitable in falling to the first-place Avalanche. Whatever positives the Sabres can take from this game will be outweighed by the already grim outlook for their season.<\/p>\n
Thanksgiving is still almost two weeks away, and already the Sabres\u2019 season looks lost. They are now 0-4-1 in their last five games, 1-4-4 in their last nine and are the only team in the NHL that hasn\u2019t won a road game. Their 5-8-4 record is the worst in the Eastern Conference and good for 30th in the NHL standings.<\/p>\n
And it doesn\u2019t look like it\u2019s going to get better any time soon. The Sabres are without five of their regular forwards, along with their best defenseman and captain. Of those six players, none will be available when the Sabres travel to Detroit to finish this road trip against the Red Wings on Saturday. Zach Benson may return next week, but there\u2019s no guarantee when any of the others will be back.<\/p>\n
And the Sabres don\u2019t have the luxury of time. Even fully healthy, there were questions about whether this lineup was good enough to play at the 95-point pace necessary to make the playoffs. With 14 points through 17 games, the Sabres now need to play at a 102-point pace the rest of the way just to hit 95 points. The Eastern Conference is wide open, but the Sabres have already lost ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had some bad stuff happen to us, but we have to keep clawing,\u201d Sabres coach Lindy Ruff told reporters after the loss to Colorado. \u201cWe have to win games. In every road game, we\u2019ve been within a goal and haven\u2019t pushed through yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The failure to push through has defined this core for the last few years. After a 91-point season in 2022-23, the Sabres fell back to 84 points in 2023-24 and 79 points last season. At their current pace, they\u2019ll take another step back this season. Already, the Sabres have lost at least three straight games on three separate occasions.<\/p>\n
These types of stretches have been a constant during Kevyn Adams\u2019 six seasons as the team\u2019s general manager. The Sabres have now had a winless streak of at least five games in five of those seasons. Last season, a 13-game winless streak sank the Sabres\u2019 season before the new year. If this slide gets anywhere close to that, the season will be sunk before the calendar flips to December.<\/p>\n
And all that\u2019s going to do is make the questions about this team\u2019s future even louder. Chief among them: How long will owner Terry Pegula wait to make a meaningful change at the top of his hockey operations department?<\/p>\n
Quick hits<\/p>\n
1. Ruff moved Tage Thompson back to center in this game, and Thompson said he felt \u201clike myself.\u201d He likes being able to control the game and get his legs moving more. He also likes the shooting lanes he gets from that spot on the ice. Thompson wasn\u2019t dominant, but he did score on the power play, added an assist and led the Sabres with five shots on net. This was a bounce-back game for the team\u2019s first line after an ugly night for that group in Utah.<\/p>\n
Given how dire the Sabres\u2019 situation is at center, keeping Thompson in the middle might be the right move. Josh Norris and Jiri Kulich aren\u2019t returning any time soon, and having Thompson at the top of the center depth chart makes it more palatable.<\/p>\n
2. After two quick Colorado goals on three shots, Ruff pulled Alex Lyon and replaced him with Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. Ruff said it had nothing to do with Lyon, who didn\u2019t have much of a chance on the two goals. He wanted to wake the team up and have some extra time on the bench to deliver a message. Luukkonen stopped 27 of the 30 shots he faced in relief, but the eventual game-winning goal was one he could have had. Gavin Brindley snapped a clean shot on the rush. It deflected off Owen Power\u2019s stick, but Luukkonen had a look at it and could have made the save. He\u2019s been beaten by similar goals this season.<\/p>\n
3. The Sabres allowed their eighth empty net goal of the season and still haven\u2019t scored while at six-on-five this season. The late-game situational hockey has been rough, and this one fell apart due to lousy luck. Rosen\u2019s stick broke while he was attempting to get the puck into the zone, giving the Avalanche a scoring chance the other way.<\/p>\n
4. The Sabres are now 0-10-2 without captain Rasmus Dahlin over the last two seasons. This blue line is deeper than it has been, but Dahlin still does a lot of heavy lifting for this team. Owen-Power and Mattias Samuelsson were on the ice for three goals against at five-on-five in this game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Buffalo Sabres\u2019 6-3 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday night wasn\u2019t as ugly as the final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[1809,385,99],"class_list":["post-291382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-buffalo-sabres","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}