Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) – The Buffalo Sabres were outplayed in every phase of the game on Monday, and it spelled a 7-4 loss to the Seattle Kraken.
The win for Seattle gave the league's newest expansion team four wins in five games, and those victories were against Buffalo, the Florida Panthers, Carolina Hurricanes and the Washington Capitals.
That gave the league’s 26th-ranked team wins against the first, second and fourth ranked teams in the NHL.
From goaltending, to the defense, to the compete, to the plain laziness on some of the goals-against, it was a team loss.
It started off horribly for Rasmus Dahlin. He, singlehandedly, gave up the first two shorthanded goals in Kraken history.
On the first goal-against, Dahlin was with the puck behind the net and just allowed himself to be easily knocked to the ice by Yanni Gourde. Defenseman Carson Soucy was allowed to come down the slot untouched and it was 1-0.
On the next power play for Buffalo, Brandon Tanev came right at Dahlin and stole the puck. They were even all the way down the ice, but Tanev easily out-battled Dahlin, drawing a penalty. Tanev made it worse by not only winning the battle, but picking up his own rebound and shooting it off Dahlin, who was behind Dustin Tokarski trying to play goal.
Before the period was over, Jamie Oleksiak’s shot produced a rebound to Jared McCann, who was standing all by himself behind the defense and Buffalo was down by three.
The Sabres scored early in the second when Brett Murray netted his first NHL goal, taking a rebound off the back wall.
You would think that would get his teammates excited and back into the game, but they get run over being outshot 9-3, and gave up a goal that illustrated how disinterested they were at times.
Morgan Geekie out-muscled defenseman Henri Jokiharju with just one hand on his stick and found a wide-open McCann in front of the goal. Four different Sabres players glided back and watched him score.
Before the second was over, Jeff Skinner cut the lead to two again, but just 42 seconds later, the Kraken scored once more.
Buffalo just repeated the same thing over and over in the third. Skinner scored, but Jaden Schwartz converted a 3-on-2. Dylan Cozens scored, and Appleton gets the empty netter.
The Sabres are in a stretch of games where it would’ve been reasonable to expect five of six points, but they got just three.
Buffalo now has two incredibly tough road games coming up against the Carolina Hurricanes (best team in the NHL), and one before that on Thursday against the Florida Panthers (fourth-best team in the league).
If they give the same effort they gave on Monday, they won’t even be in either game.
