Sens Swept By Buffalo in 5-2 Loss

Oddly enough, I don't hate the Buffalo Sabres. I pity them. I pray for their fans.

The combination of Ovechkin-esque finishing and Brodeur-esque goaltending we've seen from them in a dominant 4-0-0 sweep against the Ottawa Senators, a playoff caliber team, is merely a glimpse of what they could be with some competent management. Instead, all they accomplished across these four incredible efforts, along with recent wins over better teams like Washington and Winnipeg, is hurt their draft position and give 'em some false hope. And also put them ahead of Boston? Wait, what?!?

You have my sympathy, Sabres fans. Maybe next season you'll be able to witness good hockey against more than one opposing team.

As for the Senators, yes, there have been some unacceptable efforts mixed into this season series, but it's mostly goaltending. Linus Ullmark wasn't the worst Senator tonight, but he wasn't good, and certainly was outperformed by longtime Ottawa killer James Reimer. The former was beat twice in the first period, first by losing sight of a rebound to which Alex Tuch beat Dylan Cozens, and then by a shot from the point from Rasmus Dahlin.

The trend of the Sabres' scoring on every couple of shots continued through the next two periods as well, but the Sens at the very least would be able to show some semblance of a response. A minute after Tage Thompson tripled Buffalo's lead on a power-play that put Ottawa's to shame, Claude Giroux got the Sens on the board from the slot, having received a pass from Tyler Kleven that I've yet to see Topi Niemela do in the NHL:

Then, in the third period, a brutal Cozens turnover resulted in Peyton Krebs making the score 4-2 for Buffalo, only for Jake Sanderson to respond 30 seconds later, beating a screened Reimer.

The less I talk about this game, the better. It ended 5-2 for Buffalo after Ryan McLeod found the empty net with the Senators on a power-play.

You may say it's "embarrassing" to go 0-4-0 against the Buffalo Sabres. Whatever. I'd still rather be a fan of a hockey team with a greater than zero chance of making the playoffs.

Game Notes:

• Once again, the team with the better goaltending won. Linus Ullmark needs to play better down the stretch if the team is going to hold off the Habs and Jackets, both of whom won tonight. The cushion is down to 5 points, with 8 games remaining, including 3 against those two clubs. A monumental choke is still a possibility here, and with new ownership, management, and coaching in place, there's nobody left for the players to hide behind.
• Nick Jensen led the way with an expected goals percentage of nobody cares, while Adam Gaudette was last on the team with a mediocre percentage of irrelevant. More importantly, Dylan Cozens was the team's worst player in terms of what actually matters, goals against. Direct contributions on the first and fourth goals, and was also there for the 2nd. Pretty sad that Josh Norris outplayed you over those two games, buddy, by being too injured to play. At least you've been able to show up in most of our other ones.
• I thought Fabian Zetterlund had a really strong game – he had many chances to score his first as a Senator, and generated more individual offence than anyone else on both teams tonight.

Stats:

• You want some stats? Here's one. Buffalo Sabres 5 - Ottawa Senators 2. That's the only stat that mattered this game.

Up Next:

• So it's Tampa next, huh? Those guys are pretty scary. Well, when it comes to playing the Ottawa Senators, James Reimer is probably scarier than Andrei Vasilevskiy so there's some hope. It'll be a 7:00 pm EST start on Thursday, April 3rd.