Mike Harrington: There's no holiday spirit downtown as Sabres' skid deepens
Cumulative score in two games since Terry Pegula tried to pump up the troops: Opponents 12, Sabres 4. And there is nothing worse than hearing KeyBank Center filled with roaring
Good tidings we bring to you and your kin. Ah, the yuletide glee the Buffalo Sabres can provide.
Just remember: The solutions are within that dressing room. And when you find them, be sure to pass the egg nog.
What a miserable way to spend a Friday night in KeyBank Center. A crowd of 18,267 – the largest since the Opening Night sellout against Los Angeles – saw a 6-3 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs but, of course, most of them were happy. The bet here is the building was 80% Leafs fans.
(A digression: The Sabres have to do more to keep Leafs fans out, like tying the purchase of other games to Toronto tickets. But maybe owner Terry Pegula simply wants his money from anyone and doesn't care about what helps his team, no matter how much everyone says Pegula cares. Billionaires, of course, are most concerned with their bank accounts. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming).
Buffalo Sabres fans look on with bags and palm trees against the Toronto Maple Leafs during the first period at the KeyBank Center on Friday, Dec. 20, 2024.
Harry Scull Jr./Buffalo News
When the Sabres woke up on the morning of Nov. 27, they were 11-9-1. They were third in the Atlantic Division – and two points behind the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers. They awoke Saturday morning 18 points behind the champs, who are 9-2-1 in their last 12 games, and 10 points out of the playoffs.
Their season is in tatters and there have been far too many miserable days around the Sabres of late. This December feels shockingly similar to November 2022, when an 0-8-0 run left the Blue & Gold chasing the season.
The way this month is going, of course, there's not much left to chase. There's been blown leads, overtime heartbreaks, brutal no-shows against the New York Islanders and Utah and the ill-fated owner seminar called by Terry Pegula on Monday in Montreal.
Cumulative score in two games since Pegula tried to pump up the troops: Opponents 12, Sabres 4.
And there is nothing worse than hearing KeyBank Center filled with roaring Maple Leafs fans. It's just misery. Lindy Ruff knows Sabres-Leafs games all the way back to Memorial Auditorium, circa 1979. The crowds have always been split. But they've never been as one-sided as we've seen in the last three years or so.
The Sabres really have no one to blame but themselves. They stink regularly, and they overprice the tickets on a single-game basis looking to soak Canadian fans.
The chants of "Go Leafs Go" started after 20 seconds Friday and it took only 1:29 for Bobby McMann to score the first goal.
Ruff said after the morning skate his team had to "embrace the challenge" of all those visiting fans in the house. And Ruff even said, "If we can play well, we can take the fans out of the game."
And he was serious. The Sabres had to play well to take the fans out of the game in their own building. As preposterous as that sounds, he was right. And it didn't happen.
Buffalo Sabres center Dylan Cozens (24) battles for a loose puck with Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman Simon Benoit (2) during the third period at the
KeyBank Center on Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. Harry Scull Jr./Buffalo News
"It's cool, a really cool moment," Leafs forward Mitch Marner said pregame. "I also think we get more fans when the Bills are playing at home on Sunday. A lot of Toronto and Ontario people are fans of the Bills as well, so they come for a 2-for-1. It's always fun to come into this building and then play in front of fan bases that really go loud at each other and get the chants going. So it's something you enjoy."
The Sabres did not enjoy the officiating in this one. Right after the first Leafs goal, Alex Tuch's tally was wiped out on a high sticking double minor to Jason Zucker.
The NHL explanation was dubious. A linesman called the penalty but didn't blow the whistle even though he saw an injury (the blood of defenseman Chris Tanev). Zucker was spitting nails about the situation afterward but gritted his teeth as best he could so he wouldn't get fined.
You want to find some positives out of this one?
Here's one: The Sabres didn't get booed. Of course, that's mostly because very few of their fans were in the house.
One of the other problems when you get into a losing streak like this is that opponents make sure they're on top of their game against you. They smell blood in the water and want to make sure they get their two points – and don't want to endure the indignation that will come with being the team that allowed the Sabres to snap their skid.
And getting two goals wiped out on challenges – one by Tuch and one by Owen Power when Sam Lafferty skated through the crease – didn't help one iota.
"That's where we're at right now," said captain Rasmus Dahlin. "We score five but two get disallowed. But we can't hang our heads. We did this to ourselves. We've got to work."
The fans worked. There was a distinct "Fi-re Ad-ams" chant in the 300 level in front of the press box followed by a brief "Sell-the-team." Reminder: Pegula isn't in the building much in recent years. Now, it wasn't full-throated mayhem and wasn't even close to the "Fi-re Don-ny" we heard last season during that dreadful 9-4 loss to Columbus.
But it might get awfully ugly downtown when the team returns home next Friday against Chicago. Next Saturday, Dec. 28, is when the NHL's holiday roster freeze is over. Anything might be possible then.