But it didn’t, another moment that didn’t quite work from one of the biggest names on the Sabres roster.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thompson is, of course, not alone in his struggles in the Eastern Conference Second Round, where his Sabres trail the Montreal Canadiens 3-2 in the best-of-7 series, with the Canadiens having a chance to clinch on home ice at Bell Centre on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, ABC).<\/p>\n
Rasmus Dahlin<\/a> has had a tough series. So has Alex Tuch<\/a>.<\/p>\n But all three, three of the biggest names on the Sabres roster, will need to show up and show up big if Buffalo wants to force a Game 7.\u00a0<\/p>\n “We know this time of year, there’s a heightened awareness on all your top players,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “Every opportunity, every mistake is being critiqued. We’ve gone through the game as coaches. There’s some things we feel we can help our top guys out with. And you’ve got to be able to put the game behind you that you just played and be ready to move on to that next one.”<\/p>\n In five games in this series, Tuch has zero points and is a minus-8. Thompson has four points (two goals, two assists) but is minus-9. Dahlin also has four points (one goal, three assists) and is minus-1 with 12 penalty minutes in five games.\u00a0<\/p>\n They’re having trouble producing, having trouble staying disciplined, having trouble bolstering their team when it has been needed most.\u00a0<\/p>\n And they’re not shying away from it.\u00a0<\/p>\n When asked if their best players have to be their best players to win Game 6 on the road, Dahlin said, “Yup. Simple as that.”<\/p>\n Tuch, who is a pending unrestricted free agent, was particularly honest after Game 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But it didn’t, another moment that didn’t quite work from one of the biggest names on the Sabres…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-646862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646862","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=646862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}