Sabres get ‘too emotional’ in Game 3, handed 1st road loss of Stanley Cup Playoffs

MONTREAL – Hours before puck drop between the Buffalo Sabres and Montreal Canadiens on Sunday, Lindy Ruff contemplated the insanity the team was anticipating from the Bell Centre crowd, the volume and intensity and emotion. The Sabres coach, a veteran of both playing and coaching in Montreal, knew what might help.

“I’d love to shut down the crowd by putting one in the back of the net right away,” Ruff said. 

He got his wish. Fifty-three seconds into Game 3, the Sabres got exactly the goal they wanted from exactly the person they wanted, with Tage Thompson — coming off a disaster of a game in Game 2 — tamping down the excitement at the first second-round game contested in front of a crowd in Montreal since 2015.

It was also the high point of the game for Buffalo.

“Give them a lot of credit,” Ruff said. “I said before this started, they beat a (heck) of a team. They are a (heck) of a team. Don’t take them for granted. Now, if we don’t realize it now, we’re never going to realize it.”

The Sabres did no favors to themselves, unable to handle the speed and offensive firepower of the Canadiens, unable to control their emotions and stay out of the penalty box, unable to solve Montreal goalie Jakub Dobes, unable to do so many of the things they had done successfully in Game 1, losing 6-2. 

It was the second straight loss for the Sabres, putting them down 2-1 in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference Second Round, with Game 4 back at Bell Centre on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; ESPN, SN, CBC, TVAS). 

It was a game rife with mistakes, a game that none of the Sabres felt represented what they can be, who they are. As Ruff said, when asked what they’ve gotten away from, “Just everything.”

It was a damning assessment of a team that has been able to demonstrate what it can be at its best, with excellence in net from Alex Lyon, with smothering defense, with a top line that featured two players that topped 30 goals in the regular season (Thompson, 40; Alex Tuch, 33).

But no one in the Sabres room was arguing with Ruff’s words. They saw the deficiencies in their game, the ways in which they left the Canadiens open in front of Lyon again and again, giving them chances on which Montreal did not miss.  

“Everyone in this room has (to be) better. We still haven’t gotten to what I think is our best game,” Thompson said. “And obviously it starts with me. It starts with Dahls (Rasmus Dahlin), ‘Tuchy,’ there’s more in the tank. There’s more we can do, another level we can get to. We’ve just got to find it.”

There were, he said, too many risks taken, especially off the rush, and especially against a team as good as the Canadiens. They need to be better, smarter, more cautious defensively, need to find the balance between their defensemen joining the play and opening themselves up to be eaten alive by the Montreal forwards. 

“We’re just letting them get to their game,” defenseman Bowen Byram said. “They’re a good team. When we get to our game we’re a really good team too. We have to push to get on top of them, track and get above their forwards. They’re a good team and when they get to their game, they’re hard to slow down.”

Ultimately, the Sabres couldn’t slow them.

While the teams went into the first intermission tied at 1-1, the Canadiens broke the game open in the second period, with goals by Cole Caufield (6:05), Zachary Bolduc (10:43) and Juraj Slafkovsky (12:17), before getting one back at 14:46 on the power play. 

“Lots of mistakes. You don’t lose games 6-2 without mistakes,” Byram said. “Lost coverage. They outworked us.”

For the Sabres, it marked the first time they had lost on the road in these playoffs, having won Games 3, 4 and 6 in Boston against the Bruins. There had been talk before the game about how their own building was equal to Bell Centre in its exuberance, and about how they needed to embrace the madness and channel it into their own play. 

But there were impacts, which the Sabres will need to correct ahead of a Game 4 in which the crowd will be just as rowdy, just as deafening, just as interested in throwing Buffalo off its game.

“It’s a challenge, for sure,” Thompson said. “Place was loud tonight and you feel the energy and you’d feel that they had momentum off of it. But that’s just something that we’ve got to get used to, something that can’t affect us, any of the outside noise.”

He thought they worried too much about that noise, the calls by the officials, the game within the game, about all the pieces they had tuned out in their series against the Bruins in the first round. 

“I think we got a little too emotional tonight too,” Thompson said. “We talk about all the time just staying even-keel, highs and lows, just try to stay right in the middle, and I thought tonight we really let our emotions get the better of us. Just got to regroup. 

“It’s a long series. We’re not in the spot we want to be, but we’ve got an opportunity to take one from them next game.”

There is good news for the Sabres. 

They had some of their best power plays of the postseason, saw some life from Thompson, and got a better understanding of what it means to play in Bell Centre in the postseason. They are, they hope, smarter now. 

They also know what it’s like to be here, to be down and facing a closing window, as they were earlier in the regular season before picking up their game, turning their season around, and making the playoffs for the first time since 2011. 

As Thompson said, “We’ve been doing it all year. We’ve had our backs against the wall the entire season and dug ourselves out of a hole and found a way. It’s not something that’s foreign to us by any means. It’s been two games, so I’m not too concerned.

“I think everyone in this room believes in each other. We know what we need to do; it’s not a secret, there’s no magic answer, it’s just going to come down to will. Just competing harder. And I think we have the guys that can do it and the guys that are going to respond.”