By Mike Garrity
CHICAGO — The Buffalo Sabres left the United Center on Thursday night with one point, a three-game winless streak and a complaint about a call that wasn’t made.
Ryan Donato scored 3:12 into overtime to give the Chicago Blackhawks a 3-2 win, according to the NHL.com recap, ending Chicago’s six-game winless run. Buffalo is now 8-7-4 and 0-2-1 in its last three games.
The loss opened a six-game road trip, and the schedule ahead is the bigger story. Beginning Thursday, 10 of the Sabres’ next 12 games are on the road, Sabres.com noted in its pregame preview. That might not be the worst news for a team that has been far better away from KeyBank Center than in it.
“Make the call”
The winning goal came after Chicago forward Anton Frondell backed into Sabres defenseman Owen Power and knocked him down, Sabres.com reported. By the time Power got up, Donato, the man he had been covering, was alone in the high slot.
Coach Lindy Ruff did not hide his view. “It’s a penalty in any league. It’s a call you’ve got to get. It’s a call that has to be made,” Ruff said, according to Sabres.com. After describing the play in blunter terms, he added: “Make the call.”
Power, who argued with the officials without success, was more measured. “Obviously, I think that should probably be a penalty,” he said. “Or at least take both of us.”
Donato, for his part, said afterward that he had not felt well. “I don’t know if I had a virus come (on) in the last seconds … I’m not even kidding with you,” he told NHL.com. “I felt terrible.”
A better defensive night, and not much else
Thursday was supposed to be a response to Wednesday. A night earlier, Buffalo lost 8-3 at home to the Tampa Bay Lightning, who got a third-period hat trick from Nikita Kucherov. Starter Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen was pulled after allowing five goals on 14 shots, and Colten Ellis allowed three on eight in relief, according to the team’s recap. The loss finished a 1-3-0 homestand.
“We weren’t good as a group,” Ruff said after that game, according to Sabres.com.
In Chicago, the defense was tighter. Sabres.com, citing tracking firm Stathletes, said the Blackhawks had four rush scoring chances and three odd-man rushes. Tampa Bay had 10 and seven. Ruff also split up Power and Olen Zellweger, pairing Power with Conor Timmins and Zellweger with Louis Crevier.
The cost showed up on offense. Power and Tage Thompson scored in the first period, Thompson’s on the power play for his 12th of the season. After that, Buffalo had five shots in the third period, with a 2-1 lead, and none in overtime. Frank Nazar scored both of Chicago’s regulation goals.
“We came into tonight making sure we weren’t giving them many rush chances,” Thompson told NHL.com. “We were on the right side of pucks. I thought we did that.” He called it “definitely, in my opinion, a better response than the last game.”
Thompson’s goal was his 225th with Buffalo, moving him past Miroslav Satan into eighth on the franchise list, according to NHL.com.
Lyon’s return, and a crowded crease
The best news for Buffalo was in goal. Alex Lyon, out since the preseason with an upper-body injury and an October setback, was activated from injured reserve and made 22 saves in his season debut, the team said. His best save came with five seconds left in regulation, a glove stop on a Connor Bedard power-play shot.
“I put in a lot of work here in the last couple of weeks. It felt nice that it kind of paid off,” Lyon told NHL.com. “I felt pretty good, but it’s kind of the perfect storm when you don’t win. You feel good, but it’s still a bad feeling.”
Lyon went 20-10-4 with a .907 save percentage last season, according to Sabres.com. Before the game, Ruff described him as “a guy that puts a smile on everybody’s face,” in the team’s preview.
His return gives Ruff three goalies to choose from. Luukkonen was listed as a scratch Thursday, according to the HockeyDB box score. How Ruff splits the starts over the next two weeks, including back-to-back games in Florida and Tampa on Nov. 21 and 22, is one of the trip’s open questions. To make room for Lyon, forward Konsta Helenius went on injured reserve. Ruff said Helenius is “still in that week-to-week category.”
Better on the road than at home
The numbers make the road trip look less scary. Through 19 games, Buffalo is 4-6-0 at KeyBank Center and 4-1-4 away from it, according to NHL standings data. The Sabres have earned at least a point in eight of nine road games. Before the homestand, they swept three games in California.
The flip side is that the home record is a problem the road trip will not solve. The Sabres were four points behind the Florida Panthers for the Eastern Conference’s second wild-card spot Friday morning, with 20 points to Florida’s 24.
“We’re just going to focus one game at a time,” Thompson told Sabres.com. “Same kind of mentality we had last year when we started to get hot. I don’t think we’re looking to go on a miracle run like we did last year; I think we’re looking to be more consistent.”
Ruff’s view was simpler. “Getting the point is okay,” he said, “but we’ve got to start winning games.”
What to watch
The trip continues Saturday at 8 p.m. in Dallas, then goes to Philadelphia on Tuesday, Washington on Thursday, and Florida and Tampa Bay on Nov. 21 and 22. The Sabres return home Nov. 25 against the New York Rangers.
Three questions will follow them: whether Lyon’s return settles the crease or crowds it, whether the tighter defense can coexist with enough offense to win, and whether the NHL has anything to say about the overtime play that ended Thursday’s game.
The Buffalo Chronicle has asked the Sabres about the goaltending plan for the trip and whether the team has raised the overtime play with the league, and will update this story with any response.
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