Sharpen Up: December 10, 2018

The Sabres are going to put the last game behind them as they return to the ice today at Harborcenter. On Saturday, the Philadelphia Flyers scored six unanswered goals, including four in the third period, to come away with a 6-2 victory.
Buffalo held a team meeting yesterday morning, will practice today and get right back at it with a game against the Kings tomorrow night at KeyBank Center.
Here's what you need to know.

Sunday's team meeting

From the Ice Level Practice Report…
Phil Housley chalked up a 6-2 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday as "a stinker," and said his team could only control how it came to work the next day.
The Buffalo Sabres didn't hide from that loss when they came to KeyBank Center on Sunday morning. They held a team meeting to go over what went wrong against the Flyers and addressed what they need to do to fix it.
"We had to revisit it, for sure, just what happened, because that can't happen," alternate captain Kyle Okposo said. "We've been pretty good at home this year and I think that that game might've been coming for a little bit. That's unacceptable.
"We've addressed it and we feel like we have a pretty good plan in place for how to deal with it and how we're going to come out on Tuesday. We've just got to get back to being us and we've got to learn from that game for sure."
Okposo suggested that the bad habits that led to the Sabres squandering a two-goal lead against the Flyers began to creep in during their 10-game winning streak in November. They were finding ways to win, however, which allowed those habits to slide.
You can read the full story here.

One last look at Saturday

From the Lexus Postgame Report…
When Jack Eichel tipped his second goal of the first period on Saturday afternoon, precedent suggested that the Buffalo Sabres would hang on to their 2-0 lead over the Philadelphia Flyers.
Entering the game, the Sabres were 12-0-3 when scoring first and 10-0-2 when leading after the first period. They were undefeated in four afternoon games this season, and they had beaten the Flyers after a similarly dominant start in their first meeting on Nov. 21.

Instead, the Flyers responded with six unanswered goals, four of which came during a span of 8:11 in the third period of a 6-2 Philadelphia win. Eichel spoke afterward about the need for the Sabres to focus less on their early-season results and more on the style of play that got them there.
"That's not us," the Sabres captain said. "The streak we were on, that's over. It means nothing now. Now I think we're losing sight of what's made us successful. … I thought they just outworked us for 40 minutes and that's why the game ended up 6-2.
"… We've got to realize, we haven't earned anything in this league. Just because we won a couple games doesn't mean we're just going to put our skates on and go out there and win. Every night you play, it's a battle. We've got to realize that. They just wanted it more. it's frustrating, to say the least."
"We thought it was going to be easy when we got the two-goal lead," Sabres coach Phil Housley said. "We were playing well. We were generating a lot. Then we got away from that. It's very black and white for me. When we don't do the right things and play the way we're capable of playing you can see the result."

Housley said that in Buffalo's case, doing the right things means tight checking and taken what's given.
"We're a hard-checking team, and we got away from that," he said. "We wanted to be fancy. We didn't make the right decisions. When we do that, we're not a very good team. We're very average."
The full report is here.

Pilut records 1st point

And just one more thing from Saturday...
Lawrence Pilut tallied his first NHL point with the primary assist on Eichel's second goal, head-faking as Flyers forward Jordan Weal approached him at the blue line and shimmying to his left to create a shooting lane.
The rookie defenseman launched a seeing-eyed shot that Eichel was able to redirect from the left of the net.

"I just saw something lingering around the net," he said. "I felt like I just wanted to get it to the net. Hopefully it would bounce in somehow."