The Buffalo Sabres ended the end of October as they began it, with three straight losses. The only positive aspect to be gleaned from their latest trio of defeats is that they came in overtime, the latest being a 4-3 loss to the Boston Bruins at TD Garden on Thursday.
The Sabres, in each of their 4-3 OT losses played better than their opposition, but unlike the games in Toronto on Saturday and Columbus on Tuesday, where Buffalo surrendered a one-goal lead late in the third, against Boston they erased a two-goal Bruins lead in the third with goals from Josh Doan and Alex Tuch.
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In overtime, Rasmus Dahlin lost his edge in the Boston zone, which created a 3-on-1 counterattack and resulted in Murat Khusnuttdinov’s game-winner. After the game, head coach Lindy Ruff reflected an understandable level of frustration, after his club outshot the Bruins 40-22 and severely outchanced the home club.
‘If you want to compare this game to the last game we played in here (a 3-1 loss on October 11), (there’s) no comparison,” Ruff said. “I thought we skated…we outshot them two-to-one, probably outchanced them three-to-one. We didn’t finish, some of those real good opportunities right in front of the net that we had, they’ve got to go in the back of the net if you are going to win a game like that.”
Alex Lyon had perhaps his worst outing as a Sabre, allowing four goals on 22 shots, and while two of the goals came on odd-man breaks, the Mark Kastelic goal with 21 seconds left in the middle frame that reestablished the Bruins two-goal lead after Buffalo had cut the deficit to 2-1 was particularly weak.
The Sabres will look to snap their losing skid on Saturday night, as they take on Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals.
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