Sabres lose East 2nd Round to Canadiens, home struggles among factors

MONTREAL -- The Buffalo Sabres were eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs with a 3-2 overtime loss to the Montreal Canadiens in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Second Round at KeyBank Center on Monday.

Montreal won the best-of-7 series and advanced to the Eastern Conference Final against the Carolina Hurricanes.

Buffalo was playing in its first postseason since 2011, and defeated the Boston Bruins in six games in the first round. The Sabres have not advanced past the second round of the playoffs since reaching the Conference Final in 2007.

Buffalo (50-23-9) finished first in the Atlantic Division.

The skinny

Potential unrestricted free agents: Alex Tuch, F; Beck Malenstyn, F; Tanner Pearson, F; Josh Dunne, F; Luke Schenn, D; Logan Stanley, D

Potential restricted free agents: Peyton Krebs, F; Zach Benson, F; Michael Kesselring, D

Potential 2026 Draft picks: 4

Here are five reasons why the Sabres were eliminated:

1. Home struggles

It had been 15 years since Sabres fans had gotten to welcome the playoffs back to KeyBank Center, and those fans provided an impressive atmosphere for the home team. But it didn't push the Sabres to victory.

Outside of Game 1, in both the first round and second round, the Sabres did not win at KeyBank Center, going 2-5 at home. It got bad enough that the Sabres stayed at a hotel the night before Game 7 against the Canadiens trying to change up the vibes, trying to make it feel like a road game.

Coach Lindy Ruff even joked after the Sabres won Game 6 at Bell Centre that they were trying to get Game 7 moved there.

Nothing helped, as they fell in one final time in Game 7 at home, and were outscored 14-6 in their final three home games of the series.

2. Big guys weren't big enough

There was no question that in Game 6, some of the Sabres big names, notably Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin, began to find their games. But it came a bit too late and wasn't quite enough.

But forward Alex Tuch didn't find his game at all.

After scoring seven points (four goals, three assists) in six games against the Bruins, Tuch had no points despite leading the team with 26 shots on goal and was minus-8 against the Canadiens. The Western New York native is the team's biggest pending unrestricted free agent.

As Tuch said after the 6-3 loss in Game 5, "I've got to bear down. I've got to be better. … I can't play the way I'm playing right now."

While some of the Sabres depth players -- forwards Zach Benson and Josh Doan among them -- did a good job of providing offense, it wasn't enough to make up for the vanishing act pulled by the top guys that, in some games, included misplayed pucks, mistimed penalties, or outright mistakes.

Dahlin (five points) and Thompson (four) had major bounce-backs in Game 6, and Dahlin scored the game-tying goal in Game 7, but had they been bigger factors earlier in the series, it's possible it wouldn't have gotten that far.

3. Undisciplined play

It may be true that the Canadiens were inviting penalties to be called against the Sabres, as Ruff alleged early in the series. But it was also true that the Sabres were undisciplined, taking unnecessary penalties at unnecessary times, especially in the offensive zone.

That was never more the case than in Game 4, when the Sabres gave the Canadiens seven power-play opportunities.

Even if the Canadiens didn't score on the power play -- which they did, going 8-for-26 (30.8 percent) in the series -- going to the penalty kill over and over disrupted the offensive flow for the Sabres, putting too many minutes and too much pressure on their penalty killers.

4. Not taking advantage of early goals

In Game 1, the Sabres scored 4:31 into the game. In Game 3, it was 53 seconds. In Game 4, it was 6:32. In Game 5, it was 2:00. And in Game 6, it was 32 seconds.

The Sabres, over and over, got the jump on the Canadiens, but couldn't take control of the game. They jazzed the crowd at home and quieted the crowd on the road, but still lost two games in which they took an early lead, instead of building on what they had done and creating momentum.

And then in Game 7 at home, with the KeyBank Center crowd wild, they allowed the Canadiens to score first for only the second time in the series, as Montreal built up a 2-0 lead that, although the Sabres were able to erase, never turned into a lead and the series ended in overtime.

5. Goaltending inconsistency

Throughout the playoffs, Ruff continually mentioned that the Sabres had three goalies. And while they didn't use Colten Ellis in the postseason, they certainly used both Alex Lyon and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, repeatedly flipping between the two.

While this seven-game series loss was surely not the fault of either goalie, the Sabres could have used more consistency from their goaltenders.

It was hard to know in each game what they would get, something that was perhaps never more obvious than in Game 6, a win for the Sabres. Lyon, who had helped carry them into the second round, by allowing only five goals in the final four games of that series, gave up three goals on the first four shots of Game 6. He was replaced by Luukkonen, who had had his ups and downs, but was perfect on all 18 shots he saw in that game. Ultimately, Lyon finished the series with an .847 save percentage, allowing 15 goals on 98 shots; Luukkonen finished with an .897 save percentage, allowing 10 goals on 97 shots.