TORONTO — Lindy Ruff stood just outside the visitors locker room at Scotiabank Arena and looked like a man who was running out of answers. His Buffalo Sabres had just lost 5-3 Sunday to the Toronto Maple Leafs. The loss brought the team’s losing streak to 10. The Sabres took a 3-1 lead in this game and then allowed four unanswered goals.
“I’m almost lost for words, obviously,” Ruff said before ending a two-minute, 41-second news conference. “It’s on me to solve this. This is the toughest solve I’ve been around. It is on me to get these guys in the right place to win a hockey game. And nobody else. Just me.”
Ruff is 64 years old. He played 12 seasons in the NHL and has coached the fourth-most games in league history. And even he is in disbelief about what he’s seeing from a Sabres team that hasn’t won since Nov. 23 and is one point away from last place in the Eastern Conference.
On Sunday night in Toronto, the frustration was all over the visiting dressing room. Dylan Cozens stormed off the ice and into the room after receiving a 10-minute misconduct for abuse of officials after the Leafs’ empty-netter made it 5-3. Mattias Samuelsson sat at his locker stall with his face in his hands for several moments as reporters filed into the room. Alex Tuch summed up the mood of the room fairly succinctly.
“It’s pretty sh–ty, honestly,” Tuch said. “Losing 10 in a row, there’s no good feelings. Just go to work.”
As Bowen Byram told reporters after the loss to Washington on Saturday, “If there was a magic potion, we’d be taking it.”
This 10-game losing streak is the longest the Sabres have had since the 18-game losing streak in 2021. Ralph Krueger got fired 12 games into that span. This streak is now tied for the fifth-longest losing streak in franchise history. It’s still only the third-longest streak the Sabres have had during this 13-season playoff drought.
And this team now seems poised to extend that drought to 14 seasons. After coming home from California on Nov. 23 in possession of a three-game winning streak and a wild-card spot, the Sabres are closing in on a month between wins. Since the start of November, the Sabres have just four regulation wins in 21 games.
Throughout the losing streak, the Sabres have tried to stay positive by noting how tight the standings still are in the Eastern Conference. But there’s also this reality: Since 2000, only four teams have had a 10-game losing streak and made the playoffs in the same season. The last time it happened was the 2017-18 Flyers. Christmas is still more than a week away, and the Sabres’ playoff hopes look all but dashed.
General manager Kevyn Adams said before the season that the Sabres need to “raise the standard.” But this team looks like so many others during the drought. In what was supposed to be a win-now season, the Sabres are worse than they were last season. They now have three losing streaks of at least eight games with three different coaches during Adams’ tenure. So while it’s admirable for Ruff to say it’s on him to get the Sabres out of this, Adams is the one who assembled this roster and has done nothing to it since the season started.
In a sense, the Sabres are fortunate most of the sports-watching public in Western New York was glued to the Buffalo Bills’ thrilling 48-42 win over the Detroit Lions on Sunday. They missed the Sabres storming out to leads of 2-0 and 3-1 while taking advantage of Leafs goalie Dennis Hildeby making just his third career start. They also missed the Sabres allowing three second-period goals in a span of less than three minutes. Ruff called a timeout to try to settle the team down and instill some belief. Devon Levi, who got called up Sunday and made his first start since Nov. 16, made a key save late in the second period to keep it a one-goal game.
“(Lindy) gave a good speech after the second period,” Levi said. “At least for me, it touched me and I wanted to go out there and try to win the game.”
Yet the Sabres looked out of gas in the third. The Leafs outshot the Sabres 19-7 in the third period and had a 10-0 advantage in high-danger chances. Toronto finished this game with 70 percent of expected goals and a 22-4 advantage in high-danger scoring chances, according to Natural Stat Trick. The Sabres didn’t have a single high-danger chance in the second or third periods.
“It wasn’t good enough,” Tuch said. “Our details weren’t good enough. We let off the gas.”
That’s a troubling thought for a team on a 10-game losing streak. Next up is a road game against the Canadiens. A loss in regulation would mean sole possession of last place in the Eastern Conference.
Quick hits
1. Jack Quinn came into this game with only one goal, and that was an empty-netter. He had been a healthy scratch for each of the previous five games. On Friday he was blunt about his situation and said, “It sucks to be scratched.” He made the most of his opportunity, scoring two goals. One came on the power play 1:03 into the game. The other came midway through the second period to give the Sabres the 3-1 lead they ended up squandering. On both, Quinn showed a confidence with his shot that he hasn’t had all season.
“His whole mentality, he was in attack mode,” Tuch said. “He wanted it. He was hungry.”
2. Levi stopped 36 of the 40 Leafs shots he faced in his first NHL action since the Sabres sent him down to the AHL in mid-November. Ruff said he thought Levi would be fresher than James Reimer because the Sabres got into Toronto so late. Levi was able to travel to the game on Saturday from Belleville, Ontario, where the Rochester Americans were playing this weekend. Levi stopped 11 of the 13 high-danger shots he faced, both season highs.
Ruff said before the game the Sabres would evaluate after the game whether Levi would stay up for more than one game. With the way Reimer has struggled, the Sabres might be tempted to keep Levi in the NHL.
3. Ruff again tried some different combinations with his lineup. On the second half of the back-to-back, he wanted to get as many fresh legs in the game as possible. So he scratched Nicolas Aube-Kubel and Connor Clifton in favor of Quinn and Henri Jokiharju. Jokiharju took two penalties in the game and was also on the ice for a goal against.
It’s clear the Sabres are running out of answers on defense without Rasmus Dahlin, who missed his sixth straight game since leaving the loss to the Avalanche with back spasms. Bo Byram and Owen Power each logged over 24 minutes in this game again. The Sabres sent Ryan Johnson to the AHL to bring Levi up, but Johnson has looked better than Jacob Bryson, who was on the ice for two goals against in 13 minutes of ice time.
(Top photo: Nick Turchiaro / Imagn Images)
