Buffalo, NY (WGR 550) – On Tuesday night time we witnessed the worst residence loss within the historical past of the Buffalo Sabres. At the 11:29 mark of the primary interval Buffalo had constructed a 4-0 lead on the Colorado Avalanche, however but for the primary time ever, they blew a 4 objective lead at residence and misplaced 5-4. It’s solely the second time within the historical past of the workforce they’ve performed that.
All the arduous work we noticed within the first interval to attain 4 objectives all went out the window within the closing 40 minutes. Buffalo has not scored in 5 of the final six intervals and fairly frankly, have appeared pathetic whereas doing it.
I’m certain the Avalanche heard from their coach Jared Bednar within the first intermission and so they got here out flying. If it wasn’t for Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, this sport would’ve been tied by the point the second interval was over.
After the sport, Alex Tuch, Tage Thompson, Dylan Cozens and Lindy Ruff all talked about panic and so they had been completely proper. Colorado got here arduous, received each battle, brought on turnovers and the Sabres all appeared afraid to even contact the puck.
After the fourth objective, Scott Wedgewood got here in taking part in his first sport with Colorado since being traded there and just about stood in his crease and watched. Buffalo stopped working arduous for offensive possibilities and Wedgewood solely had one troublesome save proper close to the tip of the sport from the slot. He dealt with 22 pictures in 44:11 of labor to choose up what was most likely his best win ever within the NHL.
This was not a sport that could be a “studying expertise.” Every participant within the room aside from Zach Benson and Jiri Kulich have performed lengthy sufficient within the NHL to know they’ll’t simply assume they’ve it received after getting a 4-0 lead. There’s no lesson to be realized, if there may be, then they shouldn’t be within the NHL. Tage Thompson stated,
“I believe we acquired too informal, I believe we thought it was going to be straightforward and so they had been going to close it down, however they are a good workforce and they’ll have a push and I believe their push intimidated us and we let it fold on us and we did not appear to be we had any confidence to make performs or execute something popping out of our zone and it appeared like after we had it on our stick we did not need it and as soon as we had been in our zone, we had been simply working round, so a whole lot of panic in our sport.”
In lower than per week this workforce went from a workforce with some promise to a four-game dropping streak with a signature loss that will outline their season.
On Thursday the third finest workforce within the NHL will come to city within the Winnipeg Jets. They are a particularly powerful workforce to play in opposition to and in simply 4 video games, this workforce has gone from a workforce that works arduous and defends fairly effectively to a workforce that panics and isn’t battling arduous for essentially the most half. If that battle doesn’t re-emerge on Thursday, the Jets will eat them alive.
