The Sabres come into tonight’s game in a slump with just one win in the last five games, coming off back-to-back 3-2 losses on Monday at home to the Oilers and Tuesday on the road against the Isles. We followed that up tonight with the worst game of the season, losing 10-4 at home at the hands of the Dallas Stars.
Wyatt Johnston capitalized on a Sabres turnover to give Dallas the first goal of the night, 7:29 into the game on a very nice play. Joe Pavelski made it 2-0 Stars before the period ended on a perfect one-timer on the power play from Jamie Benn with 53 seconds left. Just 18.3 seconds later, Benn scored himself to very quickly make it 3-0 after the Sabres left him wide open in front of the goal with horrible defense. The goals kept coming though, with Jordan Greenway getting his first goal as a Sabre and making it a 3-1 game on a beautiful tip-in from a Skinner with just 25 seconds left. Huge goals to reverse the momentum late after those two quick goals from Dallas. Entertaining end of the period with three goals in the last minute of the game. Wasn’t great for Buffalo by any means though, going into the intermission down 3-1 and getting outshot 16-9.
The Sabres defense got caught sleeping again and Joel Kiviranta made it 4-1 Dallas with the puck bouncing over Comrie, 8:37 into the second period. It didn’t take long for the Sabres to score again though, and 1:14 later Kyle Okposo snuck right in front of the net, and with a beautiful pass from JJ Peterka from behind the net, he made it a 4-2 game. The Stars answered right back though with Ryan Suter scoring on a two-on-one less than a minute after that though, with 9:24 left in the second, making it a 5-2 game and hitting the over very early.
Buffalo scored first in the third, with 16:11 to go in regulation, with a great, quick shot from out by the boards from Jeff Skinner off the draw to make it a closer game at 5-3. Dallas made it a three-goal game again with terrible defense by the Sabres once again on an Evgeny Dadonov goal with 10:45 left in the game. 26 seconds later, the Sabres defense left Comrie out to dry, with Max Domi and Radek Faksa getting behind the defense to turn it into a bigger 7-3 blowout. The blowout continued, with Faksa scoring again with 8:22 left, making it an 8-3 game. Rope Hintz made it 9-3 at the 7:45 point as the onslaught kept going. If I wasn’t blogging this game, no chance I’d still be watching it. Viktor Oloffson answered back 16 seconds later on a nice pass from Peyton Krebs, to put the Sabres down 9-4, but it really didn’t matter at that point. Dallas hit the ten-goal mark with 3:48 left on a Mason Marchment shot.
Final: Sabres 4, Stars 10
Worst defensive game of the season, which is saying a lot. Our defense looked fucking pathetic the entire game, just giving up a ton of easy scoring chances for the Stars and Eric Comrie should’ve been cut a long fucking time ago. The bigger shocker is that there were still people left in that arena to boo them when the score went final. Pathetic game. I guess the offense was okay, but it was far overshadowed by how completely horrendous the defense and goaltending were. We got beaten out 30-10 in scoring chances, outshot 49-29, and outplayed by an expected goal rate of 4.29-1.77. Terrible to lose five of our last six games now too. Gotta just hope this was a wake-up call for how awful the team is defensively and they could get hot again to try to make this push for a Wild Card spot.
Put this garbage game in the past and get ready for the Rangers to come into town on Saturday.
Please follow me:
Instagram: @atownszone
Twitter: @atownszone
TikTok: @atownszone
If you like the site and my work, share it with your friends!
A Town's Zone 