The atmosphere, the excitement, and the energy inside KeyBank Center have been off the charts in the Buffalo Sabres’ long, long, long awaited return to the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Unfortunately, it really hasn’t helped the Sabres as their struggles on home ice continued Thursday night in a brutal 6-3 loss to the Montreal Canadiens in Game 5 of their best-of-seven second-round series, putting them on the brink of elimination.
Starved 15 years for postseason hockey, the fans have certainly brought their A-game, but the Sabres simply have not played well in front of these crazy crowds as they lost for the fourth time in six games, and unless they go into the Bell Centre and win Saturday night, the downtown sheet of ice will be melted by Sunday and a 56th season of Sabres hockey will end without a Stanley Cup celebration.
“It’s tough,” defenseman Rasmus Dahlin said of the problems at home. “There could be a lot of reasons, but we have to look ourselves in the mirror and we just have to play better on home ice. It’s unacceptable.”
The Sabres have never won a series that they’ve trailed 3-2, so that’s part of the history they’ll be trying to buck Saturday, and then possibly in Game 7 Monday.
“We’ve won four out of five on the road in tough buildings, and we’ve played fast and played hard,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “The playoffs are a different animal, but our road play has been better. If our road play is what we need to carry us through, then go to Montreal and win a game and when we come back, we’re going to pretend we’re on the road.”
Here are my observations from a terribly disappointing Game 5:
Second period was a complete travesty
This game was decided in the middle period. Tage Thompson had a golden opportunity on a breakaway to give Buffalo a two-goal lead less than four minutes in but he overhandled the puck and then got himself into a poor position and couldn’t lift the puck over Montreal goalie Jakub Dobes’ left pad.
That was part of a strong early Sabres push, but they failed to score thanks in large part to way too much stickhandling and over-passing. Having survived that, things took a drastic turn for the Canadiens at 8:01 when Josh Anderson beat Ukka-Pekka Luukkonnen to tie the score at 3-3.
Phillip Danault beat Konsta Helenius on a faceoff, Lane Hutson gathered the puck and made a nifty play before centering to Anderson who had an easy backdoor tap-in. And from that moment on, Montreal dominated the rest of the period as it outshot the Sabres 9-2 over the last 12 minutes and two of those found their way past UPL who did not look good on either.
The first came on a rush as Ivan Demidov who beat both Dahlin and Mattias Samuelsson on his way to the net and his shot slipped through UPL and was then pushed across the line by Jake Evans to give the Canadiens the lead for good at 16:15.
Just 1:18 later, after an idiotic cross-checking penalty on Thompson, it took Montreal 10 seconds to score on the power play as Nick Suzuki beat Ryan McLeod on a faceoff and the puck eventually came to him in the right circle and he beat UPL just inside the far post to make it 5-3.
“Of course, five goals is unacceptable,” Luukkonen said. “That shouldn’t be happening. Today, I feel like we let them put pucks behind us. There’s a lot of plays they found the back post maybe, which wasn’t happening in the last game, necessarily. Overall, I’ve got to be better and, as a team, we have to find a way to be more solid defensively, too.”
Sabres wasted their fast start
For the second time in this series the Sabres scored an early first-period goal only to end up getting blown out in the end. Thompson scored 53 seconds into what became a 6-2 loss in Game 3, and Thursday, Jason Zucker’s goal two minutes in ultimately proved meaningless.
Zucker’s goal was pretty lucky as Jack Quinn’s shot first caromed off Zucker’s skate and then off the skate of Montreal defenseman Mike Matheson and past Dobes. It wasn’t quite as fortuitous as Thompson’s goal off the stanchion in Game 4 at Montreal, but it was close.
The Sabres then scored on their next two shots, too, as Josh Doan and Helenius beat Dobes and the rookie goalie who has played every minute in this postseason should have been rattled. However, he really wasn’t because Cole Caufield tied the game at 1-1, and then Alexandre Texier tied it at 2-2 when he scored just nine seconds after Doan’s goal.
Helenius’ goal at 10:15, the first of his two-game postseason career, sent the Sabres into the first intermission up 3-2, but Dobes stopped the final 32 shots Buffalo fired his way which allowed the Canadiens to take control in the second and then lock it down in the third.
“I actually thought the start of the second period was pretty good,” Ruff said. “Thompson came in alone to make the score 4-2, and then I thought they had a pretty good push there for 7-8 minutes where we didn’t execute as well as we needed to. I thought some of our puck play, we were missing passes. We were going north early in the game and then the second period we just slowed it down.”
Lindy Ruff made another needed goalie change
For the second time in this postseason, UPL was pulled after two periods and was replaced by Alex Lyon, and one should probably assume that Lyon will be back in net for Game 6 because UPL just wasn’t good in this game with five goals allowed on 23 shots.
“There’s nothing he could have done on the first goal, nothing he could have done on the second goal,” Ruff said. “The goal that went in on the tough angle is one he’d want back. All year we haven’t made it about our goaltender and we’re not going to make it about our goaltender now.”
Goaltending was always going to be the big question for Buffalo, not so much against the plodding Bruins but certainly in this series against the high-flying Canadiens. UPL had never played in the postseason, and in an NHL career that began in 2017, Lyon had appeared in just four playoff games back in 2023 for the Florida Panthers.
Luukkonen had the better regular-season numbers as he finished ninth in the NHL with a 2.52 goals-against and tied for seventh with a .909 save percentage (Lyon was 2.77 and .906), so UPL got the net to start the Boston series. He lost it during a bad Game 2 and Lyon started the last four against the Bruins and first three against the Canadiens, then he lost it thanks to a poor Game 3.
Who knows what Ruff will do Saturday, but right now Dobes is outplaying both Buffalo goalies by a wide margin as the Canadiens have outscored the Sabres 21-13.
“I think we just got too comfortable there,” Luukkonen said. “I don’t think it’s anything too crazy. I’ve got to be better. The whole team has to be better. I don’t think it’s much more complicated than that.”
Paging Alex Tuch, where are you?
The 30-year-old always dreamed of playing for the Sabres when he was growing up in the Syracuse suburb of Baldwinsville and he got his chance when he came to Buffalo from Las Vegas as part of the trade package for Jack Eichel in 2021.
He has been a solid two-way player for the past five seasons and has scored 139 goals and 309 points as a Sabre, then was one of the best players in the series against the Bruins when he had four goals and seven points.
But Tuch has completely disappeared against Montreal as this was his fifth straight scoreless game and he is now minus-8 in the series, and it’s possible the free agent to be just played his last home game for Buffalo.
Not that Tuch is alone on the missing persons list. Thompson has two goals and four points, but he has not been close to the superstar player we’ve come to know and he’s now minus-9 and has taken two stupid penalties that led to Montreal power-play goals. And the other member of the first line, Peyton Krebs, has no points and is a minus-5.
Tuch, Thompson and Krebs has been anything but the top line in this series and their ineffectiveness in both ends of the rink are a huge part of why the Sabres are down 3-2. By comparison, Montreal’s top line of Caufield, Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovsky combined for seven points in Game 5, and have totaled seven goals and nine assists for 16 points in the five games.
“I think you get in a series like this and you’re struggling a little bit, and I think he’s lost a little bit of confidence trying a little too hard to make that extra play,” Ruff said of Tuch. “No. 1, you have to get your feet moving, whether it’s through the neutral zone or whether you’re challenging at the blue line, and that line just hasn’t been quite connected. Feet have to get moving.”
Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for more than four decades including 37 years as the full-time beat writer/columnist for the D&C. He has written numerous books about the history of the team, and he is also co-host of the BLEAV in Bills podcast/YouTube show. He can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com, and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Sabres are paying for home ice struggles and now face elimination
Reporting by Sal Maiorana, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle / Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
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