BUFFALO, NY – Coach Lindy Ruff and the Buffalo Sabers have tried everything from benching players to giving extra days of rest, shuffling lines and even a pep talk from owner Terry Pegula, and nothing has worked to lift the team from its double-digit skid. .
One solution forward Dylan Cozens knows won’t work is for the Sabers to talk their way out.
“Looking at everybody here, we have a team that needs to win and players that need to do it,” Cozens said after Thursday’s practice.
“But we’ve been saying that for a long time,” he added before punctuating his last words with an insult. “It’s time to go…do it.”
Frustration builds as the Sabers continue to circle. They are in the midst of an 0-8-3 slump, the NHL’s longest season, and the fifth worst for a franchise that is prone to a league-record 13-season playoff losing streak.
“There is not much to say. It’s sad,” said Cozens. “You have to try to put it behind you as much as you can and go out and win the next game.”
The Sabres, who host Toronto on Friday, have gone nearly a month since their last win — a 4-2 win at San Jose on Nov. 23, which won three games on the west coast. The win pushed Buffalo into third place in the Atlantic Division standings and seventh in the Eastern Conference.
What followed was a bad losing streak that dropped Buffalo (11-17-4) to the Eastern Conference, with the Sabers gaining as much as the Pegula-led Buffalo Bills and playoff-bound (11-3).
It’s a skid in which the Sabers lost six games with one goal, and were beaten and beaten in the lead by being knocked down 44-24. The low point was a 5-4 loss to Colorado on December 3 when Buffalo became the 90th team in NHL history to squander a lead of four or more goals.
Ruff, in his second return to Buffalo, vowed after the loss to Colorado that it was up to him not to let it snowball. However, following Sunday’s 5-3 defeat at Toronto, Ruff admitted: “I was almost speechless.”
Two days later in Montreal, and a day after Pegula spoke to the team to assure the players that the answers were in the room, the Sabers responded with a 6-1 dud. The Canadiens opened the scoring 19 seconds into the game when a shot wide of the net returned to the middle after hitting the official’s skate.
“That was really hard,” Ruff said Thursday. “You’d like to see a much bigger response.”
Ruff is the latest in a line of six Sabers coaches following his firing 11 years ago to face a long layoff.
Nine of Buffalo’s 20 longest streaks in which the Sabers have failed to register a point have occurred since 2013-14. And five of the team’s 15 longest winless streaks have occurred at the same time, including a franchise-worst 0-15-3 skid in the 2021 season.
And the only immediate help is the return of captain Rasmus Dahlin after missing seven games with a back injury.
“What I saw was a slight change in momentum. “One goal turned into a few goals against me,” said Dahlin.
“We have to start on a new page and build,” he added. “You have seen a lot of games this year. We are a good team. This is not who we are.”
Meanwhile, Ruff announced power forward Jordan Greenway will be out indefinitely after undergoing surgery to repair a mid-body injury.
The question is if there are any more changes on the way, especially after general manager Kevyn Adams suggested he was willing to keep quiet during what was a heated news conference two weeks ago.
Adams answered a question about the Sabers having an NHL roster too young, saying he would have re-signed 43-year-old goaltender Craig Anderson to increase Buffalo’s rating.
It was the same news conference where Adams said Buffalo wasn’t a “destination city” for free agents and players without no-trade clauses.
“We don’t have palm trees. We have taxes in New York,” Adams said, which led to Sabers fans bringing exploding palm trees to games and throwing them onto the ice.
It won’t be much easier for the Sabers on Friday, when they are expected to play a home game in front of a large and raucous crowd of Maple Leafs fans who will make the short trip across the border. It has been common in recent years for Toronto fans to make up a third of the crowd in Buffalo.
“Face it,” said Dahlin, looking forward to hearing, “Go, Leaves, Go,” the Buffalo sang. “We know what will happen. We just have to win.”
