Buffalo Sabers blocked by Philadelphia Flyers on consecutive days

Punctuation: Brochures 3 | Sabers 0

Shots: PHI 38 | BUF 28

Saber Goals: None

Goals of pamphlets: Sean Couturier (5), Michael Raffl (3), James van Riemsdyk (10)

Less-1 | Where do we start?

There was nothing to like about the Buffalo Sabers game in any of the competitions this weekend. Both today and yesterday, the blue and gold team was completely defeated by a top Philadelphia Flyers squad.

The Sabers’ uniform strength problems are nothing new, but the futility of the team’s leading league power-play unit has added a new dimension of desperation. Jack Eichel’s return from an injury to his lower body did not lead to any kind of spark. As is tradition, Buffalo effectively packed everything before March.

Only this time the season only started in January, so that’s it.

Less-2 | More head scratching training decisions

Since the start of this afternoon’s contest, the Sabre line combinations were a mess. Jeff Skinner remained on the fourth row (hey, at least he’s playing now), and Kyle Okposo served as an anchor alongside Eric Staal and Taylor Hall. That line that produced an xGF rate of just over 33 percent on this one. Surprisingly, only an advanced trio really did better, which is just incredible.

Perpetual fighters Cody Eakin and Tobias Rieder were not really catalyzed by the presence of Casey Mittelstadt in any way. This group carried a uniform strength xGF rate of just 10.34 percent (which was STILL not low for the team).

Only three Sabers ended the day with positive xG shares (Sam Reinhart, Jeff Skinner and, surprisingly, Brandon Davidson). At the risk of having a police cliché called me, this looked like a team that left the coaching staff.

But hey, at least they have their “basic principles” to support themselves, right?

Minus 3 | Record-breaking

After yesterday’s defeat, Dimitri Filipovic of the PDOcast tweeted an interesting fact about the Sabers’ five-to-five scoring problems in 2020-21.

Obviously, today’s performance did nothing to help the fact that Ralph Krueger’s team is on its way to becoming the most futile scoring team in NHL history. Yes, somehow worse than the 2014-15 Sabers team that was built with the sole intention of losing games.

Any logical team would be strongly considering a coaching change at this point. Last week, Montreal Canadiens fired Claude Julien, and he had a winning record! There is a counterargument for “continuity” here, but in a team that has Eichel, Hall, Reinhart, Skinner and Stall at the front, there is simply no excuse for this degree of failure in the attack.

Fortunately, we all have a day off before this team takes the ice again. The next dispute is next Tuesday against the New York Rangers. The disc release is set for 19h.