BUFFALO, N.Y. — After the Sabres lost their sixth straight game, it was rather obvious they were letting things slip in their game. If you’re not good at your attention to detail, you’re just not going to win many games.
It was obvious that Don Granato let them know about it because in their 5-1 win in Toronto on Wednesday, the Sabres' attention to detail was better than I had seen all season.
The Sabres not only engaged in the battles, but they won them. Tage Thompson doesn’t score his goal if he doesn’t do everything he can to retrieve a puck in his skate with several Maple Leafs around him. Buffalo probably doesn’t win if around 15 seconds after Victor Olofsson gave them a 2-1 lead, Craig Anderson doesn’t stop a breakaway and the rebound.
Alex Tuch challenged his teammates after the loss in Montreal, saying that the Canadiens were blocking shots while up four goals. He said his team needs more of that. The Sabres played desperately with key blocks from John Hayden, Kyle Okposo, Mattias Samuelsson, Robert Hagg and Mark Pysyk, who had six blocked shots. Most of those were great scoring chances that were snuffed out.
I think Jeff Skinner summed it up to me best: “The other team is trying to do the same thing that we’re doing. A lot of those 50-50 battles along the wall, trying to get pucks out, you have to try to find a way to win those battles. I thought we did a good job of blocking shots.
“It’s making big plays at big moments. There’s times in games where you need a big penalty kill, or you need a big save from your goalie. Andy did a great job of that, because those are the times when momentum can change in a game, and then you have to try to feed off it and build off of it.”
If the Sabres had good habits and did these little details well and more often, they wouldn’t be 29th in the NHL with a points percentage of .382. Yes, that’s better than last season, when they were dead last in the league at .330, but it’s still the sixth worst in team history.
So now we have one game where they showed themselves they can handle a very good, high scoring hockey team and actually beat them badly. They’ve shown themselves that good attention to the small details is the difference between a good team and a bad team.
Now can they keep it up against the Minnesota Wild, Los Angeles Kings, Florida Panthers and Vegas Golden Knights?
These four games are like bringing in the Sabres Alumni team. Former Sabres coming to town are Marcus Foligno, Dmitry Kulikov, Brendan Lemieux, Sam Reinhart, Brandon Montour, Jonas Johansson, Cal Petersen, Jack Eichel, Will Carrier, Robin Lehner and Brayden McNabb.