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Grading the Buffalo Sabres – The week the playoffs hopes died

Your Three Stars from last week: Evander Kane, Robin Lehner and the penalty kill. The Three Goats are Dmitry Kulikov, Nicolas Deslauriers and Derek Grant. Here is the LINK to the spreadsheet with all of this season’s results.


The Buffalo Sabres went into the bye week feeling pretty good about themselves, sitting just outside the playoff bubble and waiting for teams above them to drop points. Of course, that also meant that when they returned from the break they would need to keep racking up the points.

However, all the Sabres seemed to have perfected since the bye has been the art of blowing leads of all kinds, of the one-goal variety, the dreaded two-goal advantage and believe it or not, even three-goal leads have not been exempt. Not since Chuck Palahniuk’s literary masterpiece ‘Choke’ hit the bookshelves has that particular phenomenon so captured the imagination in Western New York.

As always, we’ve got all the forwards and defensemen who played over the past week in the grading.

We’re sticking with the Corsi For % as well the stats beyond just the goals, assists and +/-. For Dan Bylsma we’ve added the team’s overall Corsi For % as a measurable stat.

Rate the players’, PP, PK and coach’s performances for these games –

Colorado Avalanche 5-3 Buffalo Sabres

Arizona Coyotes 3-2 Buffalo Sabres

Buffalo Sabres 4-5 Nashville Predators (OT)

Buffalo Sabres 6-3 Arizona Coyotes

Buffalo Sabres 1-2 Tampa Bay Lightning (SO)

Pittsburgh Penguins 4-3 Buffalo Sabres

(Click here to go vote if the poll is not showing up below or you are having other issues with the embedded form – thanks!)