16-1
That was the shot total in favor of the Columbus Blue Jackets ahead of the Buffalo Sabres with five minutes left in the first period at Nationwide Arena Sunday night before Mark Pysyk tracked down a hail-mary pass from Victor Olofsson for the away team’s second shot of the night.
Pysyk’s wrister found its way to the back of the net to tie things at one, but there was plenty not to like about the way the game was played up to that point. Dean Kukan got things going for the Blue Jackets as Dylan Cozens deflected a clearing attempt from Peyton Krebs back into his own zone and the Blue Jackets finished to take the early lead. The Blue Jackets poured it on from there.
Tage Thompson and Boone Jenner traded goals midway through the first and things were tied 2-2. The Sabres were incredibly lucky to get to that point considering how horribly they had played to that point. Craig Anderson – despite making 18 saves in the first period – looked every bit the part of a 40-year old goaltender as he was unable or unwilling to butterfly. He was conserving energy, and on that Jenner goal, he looked incapable or unwilling to expend the energy to get back into position to make the save. Anderson was a mere few inches from making a save on Jenner, but he was either gassed or unable to push hard enough to get across the crease.
This is by no means an attempt to pin the first period on Anderson.
The Sabres were absolutely brutal to open the game, and they displayed little interest in competing until Pysyk got his lucky goal to tie things up at one. This is the second time in three games that the Sabres have come out completely flat, with the other being Buffalo’s game against Ottawa on Thursday night. The Sabres aren’t good enough to take nights off against competition that is somewhat close to their own skill level, but after playing the Colorado Avalanche reasonably well, they seemed to be under the impression that they could mail it in against Columbus.
Wrong.
The only reason things were remotely close to begin the contest is because the Columbus Blue Jackets played J-F Berube in this game. If that name sounds oddly familiar in a distant, unplaceable way, here’s his background: Barube is a 30-year-old goaltender with 34 games of experience who last played in the NHL during the 2017-2018 season with the Chicago Blackhawks. He is a Dustin Tokarski-like story for the BJs. Again, no disrespect to Berube, but there’s no way this game is tied after one if not for the home team playing bizarro-Tokarski.
Don Granato’s squad sometimes gets the idea that if they play one good game, they’re able to simply exist as a good team in this league and compete in the next one without putting in the hard work. That attitude has to change.
Kukan got his second of the game and third of the season early in the second on a point shot that may have caught a piece of Anders Bjork’s glove on its way past Craig Anderson. Patrick Laine seemingly made it a 4-2 lead on a beautiful dragging wrist shot that beat Craig Anderson high on the blocker side. Fortunately for the away team, that goal wouldn’t count as Don Granato made the right call to challenge the play as being offside and the Sabres were only down 3-2 despite being badly outplayed.
Columbus would get it back anyway with Zach Werenski’s 8th goal of the season following a completely abysmal powerplay by the Sabres. Don Granato’s squad would be wise to remember a piece of wisdom imparted by Herb Brooks to his 1980 men’s Olympic hockey team:
"You don't have enough talent to win on talent alone."
This team seems to forget that on a day-to-day basis. The yo-yoing effect from an entertaining team that gives fans hope, to a team that looks utterly lost and hopeless is undoubtedly keeping prospective ticket buyers from committing to yet another edition of failed Sabres hockey. It’s hard to get invested in a team that finds its identity and then loses it within the span of three days, despite keeping largely the same roster over the same period. Somehow the Sabres have to get out of the rhythm of playing one good game against a good game and then following that with an absolute stinker against a mediocre opponent that they should be able to at least hang with.
Peyton Krebs and Casey Mittelstadt did turn things on later in the second period, but by that point the game was over and it didn’t matter much, especially when considering that the Sabres only had 12 shots against Berube through 35 minutes of the game. When playing a goalie like Berube who hasn’t seen NHL action in three years, the modus operandi needs to be putting as much rubber on net as possible in the hope of getting a soft shot through. The Sabres were unwilling to do that until the game was out of hand.
Brendan Gaunce landed the coup-de-grace late in the second period to make it 5-2 with a breakaway shot that went top cheese to beat Anderson. There isn’t much more to say relative to the game after that point. There are simply to many guys who are happy to take the night off and mail in a performance rather than working to create a win. Kyle Okposo added a goal late in the second to bring the Sabres within two goals, but at that point, it was too late to do anything about the outcome. Frankly it isn’t worth the digital ink to write about what happened in the third period.
They took the first two periods off and the third was irrelevant. The Sabres are back in action on Wednesday night against the Montreal Canadiens.
Maybe they’ll be prepared to play that game.