The Buffalo Sabres loss to Vancouver was worse than you think
Last night, we saw a ray of hope extinguished early as the Buffalo Sabres fell behind 5-2 to the Vancouver Canucks and could not recover.
Earlier in the season, the Buffalo Sabres took one in convincing fashion on a road trip against the Vancouver Canucks. The win improved the Sabres record to 4-1-0 in the early going. Buffalo has been 3-8-0 since, with their most recent loss coming against those same Canucks.
And although the Sabres battled back and lost by just one goal, there is really no moral victory here. The Sabres, overall, looked like a bad hockey team. The defense was often caught out of position, they couldn’t get the puck to one another on offense, the power play was bad, the penalty kill was worse, there was no physicality, and once more, they had a tough time winning draws.
But that’s just the tip of the world’s largest iceberg. Of the team’s nine losses in 2022-23, this one may have been the worst.
Buffalo Sabres loss to Vancouver was borderline embarrassing
The Sabres lost to a team that, record-wise was the third-worst in the NHL and the second-worst in the Western Conference. They allowed two goals in just 72 seconds, both on the power play, and by that time, it was writing on the wall for the Blue and Gold in front of a half-empty arena.
To their defense, they managed to make it a game, with Casey Mittelstadt playing the role of Unlikely Hero and putting one between the pipes for the Sabres. But in the NHL, a 5-2 deficit isn’t easy to overcome in a span of about 30 minutes.
Buffalo made mistake after mistake, while for the first two periods, the Canucks played a methodic game. Vancouver did start slipping up in the third while the Sabres finally found a trace of rhythm, but again, writing on the wall.
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It doesn’t get any easier for the Sabres, as they are in Ottawa tonight for a back-to-back before they take off for Toronto to play the Maple Leafs. And while the Sens are in last place in the Atlantic, the Sabres loss to Vancouver last night tells us it really doesn’t matter at the moment. The Sabres can fall to anyone.
Article Source: Observations: Sabres stumble again as Canucks hand Buffalo its sixth straight defeat by Mike Harrington
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