There have been quite a few stinkers in the Buffalo Sabres’ 18-game losing streak.
Number 18 was worthy of an award for the worst.
Ivan Provorov had the OT winner for the Philadelphia Flyers
The Sabres held a 3-0 lead after 40 minutes of play over the Philadelphia Flyers, in Buffalo.
“Not really any words, to be honest,” the Sabres’ Brandon Montour said. “You go through a stretch like this, you can blame the system, blame coaches, blame other lines, you blame all those things, but I think in the end, you’ve got to be an NHL player. You go up 3-0 like that, especially as desperate as we are to just get two points, it’s embarrassing.
“I know this whole stretch is embarrassing, but especially tonight, any team in the NHL, I don’t care who you are, that’s a win. Tough bounces, sure, here or there. … But the third period, you’ve just got to be desperate, and guys, I don’t know if they try to feel sorry for each other, or, like, you just have to find a way there. That’s unacceptable.”
The Flyers rallied with three goals in the third to force overtime, and Ivan Provorov scored just 42 seconds in the extra session to steal the win at 4-3.
“Honestly, I’m not sure why it keeps happening where we fall behind early, don’t have a good start and only start playing when we’re behind,” said Provorov, who also had an assist. “I don’t know, I guess maybe coming for the next game, coming out we should think that we’re down 3-0 and maybe then we’ll have a good start.”
The Flyers avoided the embarrassment of being “the club” that ended the Sabres’ futility.
Sean Couturier made the extra session necessary with he scored with 89 seconds left in the third period.
Brian Elliott made 29 saves to get the win.
Henri Jokiharju, Cody Eakin and Brandon Montour were the Buffalo strikers for the 3-0 lead.
“If you keep hanging onto the negative, the negative will keep coming up,” Sabres head coach Don Granato said. “But we know we’re going to be dragged into everything in the past as this as an accumulation … but we can’t allow that to happen. We’ve got to worry about the next game in front of us, the next shift, the next play, the next opportunity.”
Kevin Hayes got the third period rally going to make it 3-1, and Claude Giroux made 3-2.
“I truly believe that every player that puts on this uniform works as hard as he can,” Hayes said. “It’s an honor to play in this league and play for this organization. When things aren’t going your way, you’ve got to stick to your work ethic, and I thought today we had a chance to kind of go into a little shell and start blaming others, and that’s the opposite of what we did. And ultimately it came down to hard work, and we came out on top.”
This was a loss for which there is no excuse. The Flyers were on the ropes, and the Sabres let them get back to the center of the ring.
“I don’t think we took them lightly, but we weren’t … it’s very frustrating right now,” Giroux said. “We need to figure it out. We need to get together as a group and get our things in order here because [there are] not a lot of games left and we can’t be shooting ourselves in the foot like that.”
Question is, who is left to pay a price?
Linus Ullmark made 32 saves in the loss.
“Guys are trying to keep each other positive and bump each other up,” Montour said. “Our focus is you have one good shift, you want to follow it up for that next line. That’s what we’re trying to do.
“You let up a goal, you’ve just got to refocus and get back at it. We owned them the first two periods. Why can’t we finish them? We just got to be better.”
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