3 major things the Buffalo Sabres must address immediately

Following their 7-2 loss to the New Jersey Devils, the Buffalo Sabres look like a team in shambles 24 hours after a come-from-behind win.

The Buffalo Sabres are far from being a bad hockey team, but they are a hockey team that has plenty of issues. These issues are costing them games, and if they want to be a legitimate playoff contender this season, they need to find ways to address them or else they’re going to keep churning out the same mediocre product.

The good news is that the second issue listed below will directly play into fixing the other two, but it’s also the most challenging of the trio.

3 things the Buffalo Sabres must address

1 – Preventing slow starts

Slow starts have plagued the Sabres all season, and six of their nine regulation wins have come when they scored first. In their 10 regulation losses, the Blue and Gold scored first in just one of them, indicating that in most cases, slow starts foreshadow a regulation loss.

There are outliers, like their win on Friday night vs. the Penguins, plus their recent overtime loss to the Washington Capitals in which they got off to a fast start. But if the Sabres want to win games consistently, they need to find a way to stop allowing goals early and start scoring them.

2 – Simplifying their game

The Sabres have played well when they simplify their game, and once again, they looked to be overcomplicating things against the New Jersey Devils. You can give them a small benefit of the doubt here with so much inexperience on the ice in a game that saw veterans either sitting out or leaving the game early, as was the case of Mattias Samuelsson. But there was still enough experience here to simplify things.

It almost feels like when the Sabres win, they think they can revert to their highlight-reel, high-octane ways. This probably accounts for their inability to string together a pair of back-to-back wins more than just once so far this season.

3 – Playing better in the second half of back-to-backs

This is the second time the Buffalo Sabres have won a thriller in Game 1 of a back-to-back, only to suffer a blowout loss the following evening. Two weeks ago, the same thing happened against the Penguins when, following a thriller vs. the Minnesota Wild, Buffalo turned around and lost 4-0.

This week, they beat those same Penguins 3-2 before they flew into Jersey and lost 7-2. Do the math, and the Sabres have been outscored 11-2 in the second half of their last two back-to-backs.

(Stats and information provided by Hockey-Reference)