‘They were playing a man’s game’: Sabres shut out by Blues
The St. Louis Blues blocked 20 shots and Joel Hofer earned his first shutout of the season in a 3-0 win against the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday at KeyBank Center.
Rasmus Dahlin summed up the opposition’s effort in the moments after the Buffalo Sabres dropped a 3-0 loss to the St. Louis Blues.
“They blocked a ton of shots, they were boxing out hard, they were sacrificing themselves,” the defenseman said of the Blues. “They were playing a man’s game.”
St. Louis came to KeyBank Center on Thursday having won just one of its nine previous games. The Blues had just gotten dismantled, 6-1, Wednesday night at Washington, and gave up Alex Ovechkin’s 900th career goal in that loss. They played a goalie who entered the game with a bloated 5.02 goals-against average in six games as a backup to Jordan Binnington.
The Blues beat the Sabres, even with only 17 shots on goal. They had the luck of the Sabres hitting a few posts, including two shots by Dahlin that clanked off the iron behind Blues goalie Joel Hofer.
Sabres right wing Alex Tuch takes a shot in the third period of Thursday's game against the Blues at KeyBank Center.
Joed Vieram, Buffalo News
Hofer was a stalwart. So was St. Louis’ defensive play. Hofer made 27 saves to earn his first shutout of the season, and the Blues blocked an additional 20 shot attempts by the Sabres.
“We got our opportunities,” Sabres right wing Alex Tuch said. “Goalie played really well for them. They blocked a lot of shots, too. We’ve got to get a few more shots through. More consistency with getting guys around the crease. We’ve got to bury those opportunities. We had plenty of them tonight and we also can’t shoot ourselves in the foot, early on in the game, too.”
Sabres coach Lindy Ruff kept going back to what his team did early in the loss, a first period in which the Sabres (5-5-4) outshot the Blues, but only 7-4. The Sabres had nine high-danger scoring chances, but only one on the power play. Ruff also pointed out what they didn’t do in their first regulation loss in the last six games.
“That ability to not break through, those previous overtime games, now all the sudden you have a game where you don’t score with some pretty good opportunities, and with the number of people out, I thought we generated enough good chances to score one or two, for sure,” Ruff said. “We just didn’t take advantage of that.”
The Sabres haven’t won in regulation since Oct. 24, a 5-3 victory at home against the Toronto Maple Leafs. At one point Thursday night, they went without a shot for nearly five minutes of the first, between Beck Malenstyn’s wrist shot at 6:17 and Josh Doan’s backhand in front of the goal at 11:14. That was three seconds before the Sabres went on the first of three power plays, after Cam Fowler was called for hooking.
“We missed some early opportunities that could have changed the game,” Ruff said. “Probably the best one was the Doan opportunity. You put that in and we’re not talking about the short-handed goal.”
Only one goal came off those three power plays – for St. Louis. Mathieu Joseph gave the Blues a 1-0 lead on a short-handed goal at 12:38 of the first, 22 seconds after Hofer stopped a wrist shot by Doan.
“We’ve got new bodies, new guys in new positions and we’re trying to figure it out,” Dahlin said. “I obviously don’t want to talk about guys that are out, but we’ve got to build on our chemistry and we have to work on it more.”
One positive? That it wasn’t 4-0. Referees wiped out an apparent goal by Jimmy Snuggerud – the son of former Sabres right wing Dave Snuggerud – at 4:48 of the third. It was ruled that the Blues' Snuggerud directed the puck past Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (14 saves) with a distinct kicking motion.
The Sabres continued to create chances in the third, including a net-front attempt by Josh Dunne with less than six minutes left. Dunne couldn’t redirect Isak Rosen’s shot from the right circle past Hofer. After the Sabres killed off a tripping penalty against Luukkonen, called with 3:17 left, Justin Faulk added an empty-net goal with 1:02 left.
Tuch admitted to the exasperation of being shut out. It had been a while; the only time this season the Sabres were shut out was on opening night, a 4-0 loss to the New York Rangers on Oct. 9. He also wants his team to set its sights forward, as it begins a four-game road trip at 7 p.m. Saturday at Carolina.
“You’re going to get frustrated,” Tuch said. “It’s the name of the game there, just how quickly you can move on. We’re going to face a really good Carolina Hurricanes team. They don’t give up a lot, so when we get our opportunities, we’re going to have to bear down and put some in the back of the net.”