“It’s not good enough to just get in; there’s other teams that are doing that every year,” Tage Thompson said. “… We want to do something special, and if we’re playing like that, we’re not going to.”
After the great pregame news off the ice, things started horribly on it. Failed clears, missed coverages and some poorly placed rebounds allowed the Capitals to take a 3-0 lead just six minutes in. As a wake-up call, coach Lindy Ruff pulled starting goalie Alex Lyon for Colten Ellis, who hadn’t seen game action since Feb. 3.
The change in net seemed to work, at first. Dahlin scored his 18th goal just 38 seconds later to stop the bleeding, and the Sabres continued pressuring in the Washington zone. Beck Malenstyn scored on a rebound to make it 3-2.
But the deficit grew to two goals again early in the second. The Sabres couldn’t cash in on an odd-man rush during 4-on-4 play, then Washington’s Aliaksei Protas took it the other way and scored.
“You try to force stuff when you’re trying to come back in games,” Dahlin said. “It’s never a good thing to be down three that early. I think everything starts there. We can’t let that happen.”