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BUFFALO, N.Y. — With a 4-3 shootout win over the Washington Capitals on Monday, the Buffalo Sabres finished the first half of their season with a 15-21-5 record. That’s good for 35 points and a .427 points percentage, both of which are the worst in the Eastern Conference.
If you’re the glass-half-full type, you might look at the Eastern Conference standings and notice the Montreal Canadiens are in a wild-card spot with 41 points. For the Sabres to go through a 13-game winless streak during an ugly first half to the season and be six points out is somewhat fortunate. In the Western Conference, the Sabres would be 10 points back of the second wild-card spot.
“It should drive all of us to know you’re that close,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said after the game. “When you go through what we went through, you should come out of it a better team. Everybody should come out as a better player and understand how hard it is to win games and sometimes how easy it is to lose them. We’ve got some players that are growing and understand now there’s no easy game and no easy play. But we’re fortunate the way everything has unfolded, we’re within striking distance with (41) games left.”
The six-point gap doesn’t paint the whole picture of where the Sabres are, though. They need to leapfrog eight teams to get into that second wild-card spot. Of those eight teams, they’ve played more games than seven of them, with only the Pittsburgh Penguins also sitting at 41 games. The Sabres are closer than they should be considering the 0-10-3 stretch that buried them in the standings.
But right now, the Ottawa Senators are in the second wild-card spot based on points percentage. They’re on pace for 86 points. The Sabres would need to play at a 101-point pace just to hit 86 points. It’s far from a guarantee that 86 points will be good enough. If that number is 90, the Sabres need to play at a 110-point pace the rest of the way.
“It’s a long season,” Sabres forward Tage Thompson said. “A lot can happen. You can never count yourself out. You just have to have a short-term mindset. You have to look at it one game at a time. Anything can happen.
“Obviously in our division there’s a lot of teams that are right there in the mix, a handful of points away from each other. It’s just who can stay mentally strongest all the way until the end of the season. There’s going to be teams that are going to go on cold streaks and some teams that are going to go on hot streaks. It’s going to separate and we need to find ourselves in a hot streak.”
Tage Thompson scored in the second period against the Capitals to help the Sabres earn an overtime win. (Timothy T. Ludwig / Imagn Images)
The Sabres haven’t been able to find themselves in one of those hot streaks this season. Buffalo has four separate three-game winning streaks. They’re 0-4 when trying to extend those streaks to four games. This team hasn’t won four games in a row since roughly midway through the 2022-23 season.
Buffalo’s players and coaches don’t need to be thinking about any of that, though. Thompson is right when he says they need to take a short-term mindset. They need to be focused on playing more games like they have during this recent 4-2-1 stretch, when they’ve looked more like that team that was expected to hang around the wild-card race this season. Their special teams are showing improvement, they’ve played some strong defensive games and they aren’t crumbling at the first sign of adversity.
“The work ethic our group has shown the last two or three weeks has been a lot better,” forward Alex Tuch said. “The commitment to playing the right way, to better D-zone, to blocking shots, to sacrificing for one another has been a lot better. It hasn’t been perfect by any means. It needs to continue to be better.”
That’s all the Sabres should be worried about. While the recent seven-game stretch has been an improvement, the flaws on this team haven’t vanished.
They only have one goalie they can really rely on. The forward group is a work in progress. They’re also still searching for line combinations that will unlock more consistent offense. Thompson is playing the wing while he plays through an injury. Jiri Kulich also left the game against the Capitals Monday night with a lower-body injury. Jack Quinn, who was supposed to provide scoring in the top six, was skating on the fourth line to start the game.
The same can be said of the blue line. Owen Power has had six defensive partners this season (Connor Clifton was his partner Monday). Injuries and inconsistent play have led Ruff to shuffle the second and third defensive pairs often.
All of that has contributed to a miserable first half of the season. They’re showing some positive signs, but they have a long way to go before playoffs enter the conversation after the hole they’ve dug themselves into.
“It’s been a lot about trying to insert some confidence in some players who, at times, were feeling a lot of stress,” Ruff said of the first half of the season. “The same stress the coaches feel but they’re on the ice playing. When that many bad things happen, they’re looking to places for answers. They’re looking to us to help with the answers.
“We’ve changed quite a few things about the way we play. I think it’s helped our team. I think we’re getting pretty confident now about what we want to do with the puck. Our puck support has been a lot better. I think we’re on our way out of it.”
(Top photo: Timothy T. Ludwig / Imagn Images)
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