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A New Low: Sabres Fall Flat In First Game Back

January 29, 2020, 9:47 AM ET [1247 Comments]
Michael Ghofrani
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The Buffalo Sabres dropped last night’s game to the Ottawa Senators 5-2, a game that had most fans wishing the bye week would have extended right up until draft day. For fans, this represents a new low, when they thought it couldn’t get any lower. Even with Jeff Skinner returning to the lineup, the fans have lost hope on the season, and frustration is beginning to turn to anger, at management and even ownership.

The Senators opened the scoring on the power play just four minutes into the first. Brady Tkachuk finds himself all alone in the slot where he redirects a pass from Jean Gabriel Pageau to Thomas Chabot, who then finds Pageau with a beautiful feed to finish the play he started.







The Sabres penalty killers were chasing this whole play but a lack of awareness causes the real breakdown. Allowing any player let alone someone as skilled as Tkachuk to receive a pass in the high slot is generally not an ideal penalty killing strategy.


The Sabres would respond with a power play goal of their own later in the first, as Sam Reinhart receives a quick pass from Ron Hainsey in the slot and tucks one under Craig Anderson’s pad to tie the game at 1.




Hainsey obviously feels bad for Marcus Johansson and wants to punish Nikita Zaitsev for his hit from behind is about the only explanation for why a defender would throw the puck through his crease short-handed.

The special teams battle would once again tilt in favour of the Senators just under five minutes into the second period. Drake Batherson spots Tyler Ennis moving in from the point and finds him with a great pass to give the Senators a 2-1 lead.




The Senators lead was short lived however, as roughly four minutes later Anderson faced all sorts of difficulty trying to cover a harmless shot from Brandon Montour, and Jack Eichel just decided to shove the pad in with the puck to tie the game.




The Senators would retake the lead on what would become the game winner once again on the power play. The Sabres penalty killers collapsed down low (presumably to block passing lanes) but in doing so allowed Mike Reilly all kinds of time and space at the point. With so much traffic in front, Linus Ullmark is unable to see this puck clearly and Reilly gets his first as a Senator. They would go on to add two empty netters to seal the win.




Notes:


Insult and Injury

The Sabres were outplayed, out chanced and outshot badly enough that even being gifted two goals wasn’t enough to beat the third worst team in the eastern conference. On top of all that, their starting goalie left the game with an injury that was painful to watch on replay. Hopefully Ullmark is okay, you never want to see your goalie go through that. Unfortunately for the Sabres, this leaves them in a difficult spot. Carter Hutton has had a rough season so far and he’ll likely receive the bulk (if not all) of the starts while Ullmark is out.

Hutton is ranked 31st out of 52 goalies with 800 or more minutes played in goals saved above average (-1.15). That number looks a lot worse when you factor in how well the Sabres defense has played in front of him. Hutton has received the fifth lowest expected goals against of those 52 goalies. General manager Jason Botterill has stated publicly that he’d like to add to his lineup leading up to the deadline but his approach may change if Ullmark’s injury is severe.



Thomas Chabot

The term “workhorse” is sometimes thrown around a little loosely when a player has a hard shift every now and then, but calling Chabot a workhorse would be an understatement. The soon to be 23-year-old defensemen is averaging 26:27 a night while receiving an offensive zone faceoff percentage of 47.76. Despite all that, Chabot has been nearly breakeven in terms of expected goals for/against at a percentage of 49.91 at 5v5.



Last night Chabot actually came in below his ATOI having played only 23:18 but he did lead both teams at 5v5 ice time with 19:13. In stark contrast to the Sabres rotational play, the senators seem pretty insistent on having Chabot do most of the work. He was well below his average and yet had almost as much ice time at 5-on-5 as both Colin Miller and Henri Jokiharju combined. The really interesting part came at the end of the second period.



Yes, you are in fact reading that histogram correctly. Chabot’s last shift of the second period clocked in at a whopping 3:20 (all at 5-on-5). According to the play by play data, there were only two stoppages during that stretch. A goalie stoppage at the beginning of the shift, and an icing call with 30 seconds left in the period. Chabot has had some lengthy shifts in his time with the Senators but if this one wasn’t his longest it’s definitely up there.

Thanks for reading!
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