The Sabres played one of their best 65 minutes games on Wednesday night against the Boston Bruins and walked away with a 4-3 shootout defeat. Two nights later, the Sabres play their worst game of the season against the worst team in the league, the Columbus Blue Jackets, and walk away with a 5-1 defeat.
The night did not start well nor did it end well for the Sabres as they were outshot in the first period by a margin of 15-6 and couldn’t even muster enough energy to recover from that as the Blue Jackets outshot the Sabres 34-29 overall. Jhonas Enroth was pulled midway through the second period after allowing four goals on 18 shots and Drew MacIntyre came in and allowed one goal on 16 shots. Columbus’ Curtis Sanford gets the win with 28 saves on 29 shots.
Columbus started the scoring at the eleven minute mark of the first period, with a Mark Letestu shot in front of the net that came off a rebound from Jhonas Enroth. Six minutes later, the Blue Jackets had a 2-0 lead on Rick Nash’s first of two goals on the night, a tip in of a James Wisnewski shot on the powerplay.
The second period saw Columbus score two goals in a matter of 14 seconds to give themselves a 4-0 lead. The first came from Marc Methot, his first of the season, and the second from R.J. Umberger. Buffalo finally got on the scoreboard as Jordon Leopold wristed a shot in from the left faceoff dot:
Columbus finished off the period with Rick Nash’s second goal of the night, a tip in off a Jeff Carter shot at the net on goaltender Drew MacIntyre.
– Marc-Andre Gragnani had one of the worst nights of the year, as he didn’t take out the shooter on Columbus’ first goal and took the penalty that led to the Blue Jackets second goal. The overall statistics don’t bear this statement out but Gragnani has his moments on the ice. He leads Sabres defensemen in plus/minus with a +5, but can be wildly inconsistent from one game to the next.
– The legend of Zack Kassian started in Columbus and while Kassian didn’t completely light the scoreboard or punch every opponent’s face in, he did have a nice debut. Kassian had 11:43 of ice time and his first career NHL assist on the Jordon Leopold goal. Kassian is still going to get ice time as long as either Brad Boyes, Cody McCormick, or Patrick Kaleta are still injured.
– The Sabres lost another defenseman in this game, Robyn Regehr to an unspecified injury. This is the third game in a row that the Sabres have lost a player due to injury, Tyler Myers on the 21st, Brad Boyes on the 23rd, and now Regher on the 25th. The Sabres have called up Brayden McNabb to replace Regehr in the lineup.
– One fun fact from this game, the five goals the Columbus Blue Jackets scored was the most they have scored in one game this season. The Blue Jackets are now 4-1-2 in their last seven games, the Sabres are 2-4-1. The Sabres are also now sitting at 9th in the conference, tied with the Rangers, the Capitals, and the Devils with 25 points.
The Sabres have a chance to make up for this game against the Washington Capitals on home ice Saturday night which might not be saying much as the Sabres are 5-6-1 at home this season.