Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) – The Buffalo Sabres followed the same old script on home ice. Come out flying, get five Grade-A scoring opportunities that got turned away by Andrei Vasilevskiy, then revert back to dumb mistake after dumb mistake after dumb mistake and lose on Wednesday to the Tampa Bay Lightning 8-3.

Buffalo is 2-6-0 in their last eight home games. If you want to add in last year’s playoffs the Sabres have won just six of their last 17 home contests.

Buffalo played a good 17 minutes to open the game, Tage Thompson and Zach Benson both had two phenomenal chances and Jack Quinn had one in the slot on the power play. As it’s gone for most of the season, they wasted that and seem to forget how to play hockey for 49 seconds near the end of the first period which made them chase the game for the rest of the night. Lindy Ruff was livid after the game,

“In the last two minutes we got a D involved that shouldn’t have been involved (Conor Timmins) and gave them life.”

Just 49 seconds later on a power play, both Timmins and Mattias Samuelsson covered Sam O’Reilly who was playing in his first NHL game in front of the net allowing a clear path for defenseman John Carlson to get to the backside off the post for a tap in. Carlson fished with a goal and four assists on the night for five points.

Ruff felt they should’ve just stuck to their game and even though they missed great opportunities again, go into the intermission 0-0. Instead it was 2-0,

“We needed to just stay patient, we joined and gave them an odd numbered rush so we beat ourselves.

“This isn’t who we are, we worked really hard at staying away from those situation and if you look at the recent losses, we made that mistake that cost us, different individuals.”

Ruff just got angry enough that he ended his press conference with this,

“You can blame the defense, but it’s the defensive structure broke down, sometimes that’s a forward that has to fill which we got so good at sometimes it’s a defenseman, and I’m not going to get into the details on who broke down on what play, we weren’t good as a group and we’re moving on and playing Chicago tomorrow.”

To start the second period Timmins blocked a shot and then dropped the puck right in front of Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen giving Brandon Hagel a goal. Hagel had two goals and an assist giving him 22 points in 16 games against the Sabres. Buffalo drafted Hagel in the 6th-round of the 2016 NHL Draft. In junior with the Red Deer Rebels he scored 18 goals and 41 assists for 59 points in 56 games. The general manager Jason Botterill decided to to sign him and then Chicago Blackhawks did. He proceeded to net 41 goals and 61 assists for 102 in 66 games with the Rebels and now has three 30 goal seasons with the Lightning. This season he’s on a 51 goal pace.

After Yanni Gourde was gifted a layup after another half hearted backcheck, Buffalo’s second power play unit finally got some time on the ice and they came through when Josh Doan went to the creased a steered Ryan McLeod’s pass into the net. Just 3:38 later, Jack Quinn led a 3-on-2 which Jason Zucker finished off and it was 4-2. Just 1:01 after that on clock time, Tage Thompson beat Vasilevskiy from the right circle and the Sabres were only down by one.

On the next shift they almost scored the tying goal, but they pushed too hard and the mistake was a killer. Just 52 seconds after Thompson scored both Owen Power and Olen Zellweger pinched into the zone giving Buffalo all five players below the dots. Hagel killed them again as he sent an outlet pass to Nikita Kucherov who was gone. In 44 games against the Sabres Kucherov has 26 goals and 34 assists for 60 points including three goals and an assist Wednesday. It’s a breakaway from an extremely talented offensive player, but if you want to be a really good goalie, you have to bail your team out and make a huge save there and Luukkonen didn’t. Lindy Ruff bottom lined it and felt nine saves on 14 shots in 41:25 of work isn’t good enough and he put Colten Ellis in who wasn’t ready. He played 18:32 and made five saves on eight shots.

If the Sabres want to look at a positive they’ve won three straight on the road and have points in seven consecutive away games going 4-0-3.

There was no morning skate, so we don’t know if Lindy Ruff is going to stay with his goaltending rotation and start Ellis. He’s 3-3-0 with a 3.39 goals against and .873 save percentage. Of course anything is possible. If Alex Lyon is ready they could activate him and start him.

Buffalo is now 11th in the Eastern Conference with a points percentage of .528. The Washington Capitals have the eighth and final playoff spot at .625. The Sabres are 20th in the NHL.

Chicago is 31st in the NHL with a points percentage of .250. The Blackhawks have lost six in a row and 9-of-10.

Spencer Knight is 4-10-0 in goal with a 3.66 goals against and .881 save percentage.

Despite missing six games at the start of the year, Connor Bedard is their leading scorer with five goals and nine assists for 14 points in 12 games.

The Sabres beat Chicago 4-3 in Buffalo. The Sabres had to overcome a 2-0 and 3-2 deficit to win. Rasmus Dahlin scored at 6:10 of the third period to tie it and Jiri Kulich scored and 13:20 to win it. Dahlin by the way only has five 5-on-5 points this season. Samuelsson has nine points, Power has eight and Zellweger has six. Just another indication on how poorly Dahlin has been playing.

Join Zach Jones and Derek Kramer for the pregame at 7:00 when you’ll hear from Ruff and one of the players.