Things aren’t improving in Buffalo
They are known as trap games — contests you should win on paper, but which have the potential to go wrong on the ice.
It might be because your guys are overconfident and take the opposition lightly. It might be the night when everyone has a bad game. Or it might be the night when the sad sacks on the other side get tired of losing.
The Canadiens face one of those trap games Wednesday night when they shuffle off to Buffalo. The Sabres have the worst record in the NHL and there have been no signs of improvement in the week since head coach Ron Rolston was fired and Ted Nolan was named interim coach
Nolan was a 3-1 winner in his first game against Toronto, but since then the Sabres have lost three in a row and have been outscored 12-4.
Nolan has a reputation for being a players’ coach, but after a mistake-filled, 4-1 loss Thursday in Philadelphia, he was talking tough.
“By doing stupid things like we have been, it’s not going to work,” Nolan told Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News. “The gloves are officially off. You’ve got to do certain things to play. If you don’t, you’re not.
“When you constantly do the same thing over and over and over again, and lose for the same reasons, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. We have to do simple things. We have to play a grind-out kind of game. We can’t have turnovers. We can’t take the foolish penalties. We can’t get bounced off the puck and outmuscled in corners.”
The Sabres are in rebuilding phase, but it’s the veterans who were taking those foolish penalties.
Tyler Myers was whistled off twice and Ville Leino took a slashing penalty in the offensive zone. Cody McCormick took a delay-of-game penalty and the Sabres found themselves short two men when they were called for having too many men on the ice while killing Myers’s tripping penalty early in the second period.
“Penalties are going to stop or the people doing it aren’t going to be in the lineup. It’s as simple as that,” Nolan said. “You can’t hope anymore. We’ve seen enough.”
Nolan needs the veterans because he put an abrupt end to a youth movement by dumping three rookies. Nikita Zadorov is back with the junior London Knights, while Johan Larsson and Rasmus Ristolainen were sent to the American Hockey League’s Rochester Americans.
“Everybody is telling me the young guys are the problem,” Nolan said. “The young guys ain’t here anymore, so we don’t have that excuse anymore. We have to look ourselves in the mirror and we have to bring what each and everybody has on this team to bring.”