Bad penalties, some questionable calls and an ill-advised goaltender interference challenge combined to sink the Sabres against the Flyers on Wednesday as the blue and gold fell 5-2 in Philadelphia.
The Sabres looked like the superior team early on as they held a 1-0 lead five minutes into the game, but a weak cross-checking penalty assessed to Conor Timmins gave the Flyers a chance to tie and Travis Konecny made the Sabres pay. Lindy Ruff would challenge that goal on the basis of goaltender interference unsuccessfully which gave the Flyers another chance on the powerplay, and Philadelphia would score again.
The Sabres never really recovered from that as all their momentum evaporated following the second goal.
Ruff admitted his decision to challenge the play was unlikely to pan out.
“We knew it was going to be a light challenge,” Ruff said. “But at the same time, I’ve [seen] goals taken away that were a lot less than that. We felt that his stick got into our goalie’s blocker. Whether that was going to be enough or not, you couldn’t really tell.”
There was no good reason for Ruff to take a chance on a weak challenge with the Sabres playing as well as they were prior to the bad crosschecking penalty against Timmins. His team was playing fine, but instead of just taking his lumps and accepting the goal, Ruff decided to try for a weak challenge which effectively ended their night. Last night’s game was also the fifth time this year that the Sabres had a chance to win three games in a row and failed to do so.
Those are the kind of decisions that tend to sink a team when they’re only marginally good enough to win on any given night even at their best. Also frustrating is that Ruff saying that “you couldn’t really tell” if there was enough to overturn the call. If he didn’t even think it was a good challenge, why would he do it? It was easy to tell that was a bad idea.
Questionable decision making like this has plagued Ruff this year. Tage Thompson now has one point in his last five games after being moved over to the right wing following a successful stint at center. Ruff’s refusal to play Thompson at center is one of the more confounding, self-inflicted problems this team has right now. Yes, Thompson can be a defensive liability at times while playing center, but the offensive upside more than outweighs that and it allows the team to spread out their offensive talent throughout the lineup.
The game also shed light on the team’s three-goalie carousel as Ellis was left in the game after a first period in which he let in three goals. One has to wonder if Ruff left Ellis in the net for the duration of the game in order to force Adams’s hand and see if a bad performance would move Adams to narrow down the goalie room from three to two.
Adams needs to pick two of his guys and move on already. Lyon and UPL both sit at an .899 save percentage and Colten Ellis is at an .892 with all three having played at least 7 games. Do the Sabres really need to see more to determine which two goalies they want to ride out the season with? Just evaluate whatever trade offers are available and take the best deal for one of them. Preferably they would make a decision on either Lyon or UPL because Devon Levi is knocking on the door for a spot next year when he will no longer be waivers exempt.
Time will tell if the Sabres can clean up some of these issues prior to Friday’s puck drop in Winnipeg.
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