BUFFALO, N.Y. — With less than 30 seconds left in regulation on Friday, Jeff Skinner lost his cool.
A minute earlier, the Buffalo Sabres had drawn even with the Pittsburgh Penguins after pulling their goalie and getting a goal from Kyle Okposo on the power play. They were seconds from taking a 3-3 game to overtime with a chance to win on a night when they played the type of hockey game worthy of two points.
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But Penguins forward Jake Guentzel took a swipe at Sabres goalie Craig Anderson, who had covered the puck seconds earlier. Anderson didn’t like it, and neither did Skinner, who chased Guentzel toward the boards and exchanged slashes. Then Skinner took it a step too far and delivered a high cross-check to Guentzel’s neck and head area. The two got matching minors for the post-whistle exchange, but Skinner ended up with a five-minute major and match penalty after escalating the situation the way he did. He was ejected.
After the game, Anderson was still frustrated with how it unfolded.
“It wasn’t much, but it was clear as day I was freezing it for three seconds ahead of time,” Anderson said. “There’s no reason to do that, and then that threw us. And then he slashes Skinny, Skinny slashes back, and before you know it, we’re at the short end of the stick on that. That’s just the way she goes. That’s hockey. You’re not going to get all of the calls, by any means.”
Skinner’s major put the Sabres on the penalty kill for what would have been almost the entirety of the five-minute overtime period.
“You look at that clock, and there would have been 30 seconds left in the game had we gotten that far in the kill,” Sabres coach Don Granato said. “That is a significant difference (from a minor penalty). I’m not sure I’ve seen that. I’ve seen lots of things in hockey, but I’m not sure I’ve seen that ever.”
The Sabres didn’t get to that point in the penalty kill. Jeff Carter scored 1:34 into overtime, and the Penguins escaped the first game of the home-and-home between these teams with two points.
“I thought we deserved a little better result,” Sabres forward Alex Tuch said. “I don’t think we should have been in that situation.”
Skinner will have a hearing with the NHL’s department of player safety Saturday. It wouldn’t be a surprise if he’s suspended for at least the next game, against Pittsburgh on Saturday night. That would leave the Sabres without a top line scorer who has 17 points in his past nine games, including a goal Friday against the Penguins.
🗣 JEFF!#LetsGoBuffalo pic.twitter.com/ELM3yfF5y7
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) December 10, 2022
“Just pretty simple,” Granato said. “Emotions got the best of him.”
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Said Anderson: “We got to hold our composure, and we got to use that as a learning curve, learning tool for us. It’s one of those things where stay in the moment and get the two points is more important than getting frustrated. That’s what it was. It was just frustration on our part that we have to learn from.”
The unfortunate part for the Sabres is their penalty kill got hung out to dry in overtime. That was the unit that looked like it could have been the unsung hero early in the game.
At the tail end of a dominant first period for the Sabres, the Penguins got on the power play. While on the penalty kill, two Sabres — Mattias Samuelsson and Zemgus Girgensons — ended up without sticks. Somehow they managed to kill the penalty anyway. Girgensons, Samuelsson and Henri Jokiharju had blocked shots. Samuelsson, without his stick, knocked Sidney Crosby to the ice. Girgensons scrambled to the bench, first to get Samuelsson and a stick, then back to get off the ice for a shift change.
“That was pretty chaotic,” Samuelsson said. “One stick is hard to manage, and then you break two, and the crowd was going nuts. It gave us a little boost. Guys just laid it on the line. You’re going to have to sacrifice to win games.”
When the final seconds ticked off the penalty, the crowd reached its loudest volume of the night to that point.
“They might not think so or might not know how big it is for us, but when the crowd is hollering all game, it really gives us an extra step.”
That penalty kill didn’t end up being decisive, but it was emblematic of how the Sabres played Friday. Maybe it is their recent string of wins or Tage Thompson’s recent historic performance, but the Sabres played with the right combination of confidence and desperation.
“I thought that was our whole game all night,” Tuch said. “I thought we were working and working and sacrificing. Guys were doing the right things out there. That was crappy luck, and I kind of thought we had a little bit of s— luck all night, but honestly, we just kind of stuck with it until the end and came up a little short.”
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The Sabres were credited with 13 blocked shots, according to Natural Stat Trick. In the first two periods, they outshot the Penguins 24-8 and had 67 percent of the expected goals at five-on-five. They started the first period with a 12-2 advantage in shots on goal and started the second period with an 8-1 advantage in that department. They also entered the third period with a 2-1 lead, but the Penguins clawed back. Granato spoke before the game about how you can never count the Penguins out because of their experience. They showed that again.
And despite everything that went well for the Sabres on Friday, they’re still stuck climbing the standings with a 12-13-2 record. They got a solid performance from Anderson in net and three assists from Casey Mittelstadt, who had just three points in his previous 10 games. Victor Olofsson, who was also slumping, scored as well.
Still, the frustration was obvious in the Sabres’ dressing room as they packed their bags to head to Pittsburgh for a back-to-back. But the urgency this team had early in the season has returned.
“We let that slip away, that feeling and that sense of urgency and that feeling that we can beat any team on any given night,” Tuch said. “I thought we lost that during the eight-game skid there, and we’ve got it back in the last eight or nine games. We’ve started to turn the ship around a little bit, play harder.”
(Photo of Jeff Skinner and Penguins center Jeff Carter: Timothy T. Ludwig / USA Today)
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