The easy take is the Buffalo Sabres look out-manned and out-classed by the Montreal Canadiens.
The Sabres look a step slower, less skilled and not as tough.
That’s the easy take.
But the Sabres are heading into Game 4 of the Eastern conference semifinals down 2-1. This isn’t a bantam game at the Hockey Outlet where one team has a far better collection of talent. Buffalo’s problem isn’t skill at all.
After tallying 109 points during the regular season, there shouldn’t be any questions about how good the Sabres are. We know they are one of the fastest teams in the NHL and we know they can score goals at a high clip.
The Sabres had one more regulation/overtime win, two more total wins and eight more regulation wins than the Canadiens. Heck, the entire season series still only favors Montreal 4-3. Maybe Montreal ends up winning the series, but it won’t be because the Canadiens are a juggernaut or that the Sabres don’t belong.
But if the Sabres don’t regain their mojo, it’s going to be a short series. For all the facts just laid out, the Sabres have played the last two games like the team that stumbled through the previous 14 seasons and the first two months of this one.
They look like the team that crumbles under any sort of resistance. It’s not who they’ve been since December. It’s not who they were a week ago. Where is the team that erased a two-goal lead in the third period of their playoff opener? Or the team that smacked Boston around three times on its own ice?
“We’ve got to reset,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “Playoffs is about the next game. It’s not about the last one. The only one we can control is Game 4. … We’ve answered a lot of questions this year about tough situations and adversity early in the year. … I’m really confident in this group.”
While there isn’t the talent discrepancy in professional sports the way there is in youth levels, the Sabres made youth-level mistakes with the puck over the last two games. Whether it’s in their end or Montreal’s the Sabres have made decisions that puzzled Ruff.
When the Sabres cross Montreal’s blue line, there’s a tendency to make a pass immediately. It either gets knocked away or recovered by the Canadiens.
Youth hockey coaches tell players daily not to give up the puck without being pressured. The player with the puck dictates the movements of the other nine skaters on the ice.
Sabres defensemen Bo Byram — who has been terrific during the playoffs — didn’t make an attempt to take away the pass on a 2-on-1. And then he didn’t tie-up Kirby Dach in front of the net, allowing Dach to pick the puck of a mess of players and easily score Montreal’s fifth goal, killing all the momentum the Sabres built to cut it to 4-2.
Before that, there was no urgency to back-check on an odd-man chance that resulted in Montreal’s third goal. And neither defenseman did anything to remove Juraj Slafkovsky from the front of the net, allowing him to get an easy redirect for the fourth goal.
And when the puck goes into the corners or behind the net, the Sabres either take bad angles or send too many players into the fray. So even if they escape the scrum with the puck, there’s nowhere to go.
It cost them on Montreal’s first goal. Defenseman Conor Timmins — one of the culprits on the Slafkovsky goal — got first touch on a puck behind the net. He couldn’t corral it. Byram tried to carry it from behind the net and it was knocked away, right to a Montreal player.
It’s little plays, silly plays, that are costing the Sabres.
“First touch is a big deal. The decision we made with first touch is what cost us the goal against,” Ruff said. “… It’s all connected. If we make the proper play there, we’re probably breaking out of the zone. And when our forwards see us getting first touch, they’re reacting in a manner that we want to be leaving the zone. So if we don’t handle that, for a second, we can be out of position.”
It’s a position Ruff’s teams have been in before, although a chunk of the current Sabres weren’t born when it happened. Ruff is 6-3 after losing consecutive playoff games, winning series against the Philadelphia Flyers in 2006 and New York Rangers in 2007.
The Sabres won three in a row after falling behind 0-2 to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2001 semifinals, only to lose Game 7. And they forced Game 7 against the Carolina Hurricanes after falling behind 3-2.
Buffalo knows it can beat the Canadiens. And for all the noise about the Bell Centre, it didn’t help when Montreal went 1-2 on home ice against the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round.
There should be plenty of urgency, whether it’s because they were shellacked 11-3 over two games or because their playoff outlook becomes more grim in a 3-1 hole.
It’s time for the Sabres to show mental toughness isn’t an issue anymore.