Sabres Spinning Their Wheels And Struggling Offensively On Long Homestand

The Buffalo Sabres dropped under .500 on the season and are having difficulties at both ends of the ice and between the pipes after a 4-1 loss to the Utah Mammoth on Saturday night. Head coach Lindy Ruff shook up his lineup after a shutout loss to Dallas on Thursday, but the tinkering did not help in providing a more consistent effort from his struggling club. 

Unlike the first three home games against Chicago, Minnesota, and Dallas, the Sabres opened the scoring, and ended their lengthy streak of ineptitude on the power play, as Tage Thompson notched his third of the season eight minutes into the game, but the lead lasted all of 2:12 before Kailer Yamamoto tied the game. 

The Mammoth pulled away with a pair of tallies late in the second from Nick Schmalt and Anders Lee, and added some insurance early in the third on the power play from John Marino. Buffalo went 1 for 4 on the man advantage, but surrendered a pair of power play goals on five opportunities. 

" We  haven't  been  connected,  we're  trying  to  find  who  we  are." Ruff said after the game. "We  weren't  able  to  carry  that  momentum. W e  talked  about  power  play.  It  did  a  lot  of  good  things,  even  in  the  third  period.  Could  have  got  a  couple  more.  Our  entries  were  a  lot  better.  That  part  of  the  game  seemed  connected. (We) were  using  some  different  pieces (penalty)  killing.  We  got  to  improve  that  part  of  the  game."

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Goalie Colten Ellis made 26 saves, but was more steady than Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen has been in each of his three starts, but more concerning to the Sabres has to be their lack of firepower through the first two weeks of the regular season. The club has 11 goals in five games, and has a -8 goal differential (29th in the NHL). 

The worry going into the season was the overdependency on youngsters like Zach Benson, Josh Doan, Konsta Helenius, Jiri Kulich, and Noah Ostlund being able to make up the firepower lost by the departures of Alex Tuch and Bowen Byram. Add that to the absence of veteran Jason Zucker (recovering from offseason core muscle surgery) and the Sabres are minus 68 goals from last season. 

Through five games, Ostlund, Helenius, and Kulich have one goal, and Benson and Doan have none. The Sabres finish up their homestand against the Florida Panthers on Columbus Day afternoon. 

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