The Buffalo Sabres found a new, inexplicable way to lose Thursday night against the Utah Hockey Club.

Utah was leading 3-2 with under two minutes to play when the Sabres pulled their goalie for an extra attacker. Utah’s Kevin Stenlund then took a high-sticking penalty in Buffalo’s offensive zone. But on the delayed penalty, the Sabres didn’t give the puck to a Utah player to get a whistle. Instead, Tage Thompson sent a pass to the point, but it was off the mark. It banked off the boards in the neutral zone and trickled into the Sabres’ empty net. Stenlund was credited with the goal as the last Utah player to touch the puck. He then went to the penalty box to serve his penalty.

OH NO! 😮

The Sabres really just scored on their own net 😭

(🎥: @MSGNetworks) pic.twitter.com/M2CqbiPO1v

— BarDown (@BarDown) March 21, 2025

Thompson told reporters he didn’t know it was a delayed penalty. If he had, he said he would have given a Utah player the puck to get a whistle or thrown the puck on net to get Utah to touch it and get the 6-on-4 power play.

“Bad play by me, and even worse result,” Thompson said.

Just two weeks ago against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Sabres had a similar scenario at the end of the game. They were on a power play with their goalie pulled when the Lightning took a penalty. Rather than quickly forcing an opponent’s puck touch, the Sabres passed the puck around and wasted valuable time in the final minute.

“We’ve gone over this,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff told reporters after the loss to Utah. “The Tampa game was the same. I don’t know if he realized whether they were getting a penalty, but just chalk another one up.”

After falling behind 4-2, the Sabres again pulled the goalie. This time, a Mikhail Sergachev clearing attempt bounced off Rasmus Dahlin’s hand in the neutral zone and made it into the empty net. Dahlin skated back to try to prevent the goal. He smashed his stick on the post after the puck trickled over the goal line. The Sabres lost 5-2.

This season has been painful for the Sabres. They had a 13-game winless streak. They blew a 4-0 lead at home to the Colorado Avalanche. They had a goalie goal scored against them. And they recently lost 6-2 at home to the San Jose Sharks, who have the worst record in the NHL. Even an early February win over the New Jersey Devils became a touchpoint for this team when players on the ice failed to respond to a high hit from Stefan Noesen that knocked Thompson out of the game. Bad luck has been mixed into some of the Sabres’ low moments, but the recurring theme is a team that lacks situational awareness and maturity.

The Sabres are tied for the league lead in first-period goals and have the third-best first-period goal differential but are just 20-13-5 when they score first, good for the 29th-best winning percentage in the league. Their penalty kill and power play have ranked in the bottom 10 of the league for most of the season. The Sabres are in last place in the Eastern Conference for a lot of reasons, but situational hockey is near the top of the list. Ruff has brought up puck management multiple times a week throughout the season. According to MoneyPuck, the Sabres have 46 percent of the takeaways in their games this season, the worst in the NHL.

Ruff’s presence behind the bench was supposed to make this team play a more accountable and mature game. Instead, the Sabres have been wildly inconsistent from night to night and even from period to period. They have five losses by four or more goals and eight wins by four or more goals. Their longest winning streak of the season is four games, and they did that only once. Meanwhile, they have two winless streaks of at least six games. The special teams are no better than they were a season ago, and Buffalo has regressed defensively.

This isn’t all on Ruff and the coaching staff, either. The Sabres are the youngest team in the league again, a choice general manager Kevyn Adams defended earlier in the season. The result of having a team filled with young players who haven’t played on winning teams is the type of mistakes like the one that happened Thursday night against Utah.

Yes, that play was flukey. But it was another little moment in which the Sabres found a way to do the wrong thing. And the result was finding another new way to lose in what will be their 14th straight season missing the playoffs.

(Photo of Rasmus Dahlin trying to save a shot on the open net: Rob Gray / Imagn Images)