Sabres’ top six hasn’t been good enough to beat Canadiens
It’s often said that to have success in the Stanley Cup playoffs, your best players have to be your best players. Looking at the second-round series between the Buffalo Sabres and Montreal Canadiens, in which Montreal now has a 3-2 lead thanks to their 6-3 Game 5 win in Buffalo on Thursday, it’s clear to see that the top players for each team have written the story of the series so far.
Through the five completed games of the series, the Canadiens have six players performing at a point-per-game clip or better, including their name-brand stars such as Lane Hutson, Nick Suzuki, Juraj Slafkovsky, and Ivan Demidov. The Sabres, on the other hand, only have forward Josh Doan scoring at a point per game in the series. Buffalo will need more from the likes of Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch, and Peyton Krebs in order to win Games 6 and 7 and advance to the next round.
On Friday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed the underwhelming play of the Sabres’ top-six forward group in this series.
Tyler Yaremchuk: What’s been the problem for the Sabres is they’ve had one line that’s been going. The (Josh) Norris, (Zach) Benson, and Doan line at 5-on-5 is winning 4-1. The Thompson, Tuch, and Krebs line is losing 5-0. That’s an eight-goal swing between your top line and your second line. Just watching the game last night, it felt like a bit of a microcosm for the whole series and all of the games that Buffalo has lost. At 5-on-5, if it wasn’t Benson, Doan, and Norris in particular, if they weren’t driving the play, Montreal was taking momentum right back.
Carter Hutton: That’s the important factor here, is traditionally in a series, those lines set the table for the big dogs, whether it’s forcing teams, forechecking, creating icings where you can get the better matchups and get you big dogs offensive zone time. That being said, this has been a big story in this thing, the lack of play from Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch. I know there’s arguments of Tage Thompson being injured.
I don’t know if you can make the same argument for Alex Tuch, he’s minus-eight in the series, he’s got donuts across the board. This is a big story line. I don’t know how much is going to weigh into his contract negotiation, but you’re on a big stage, it’s your chance to be the guy, you’re in a tight series. It’s not like you’re being overwhelmed by a team like Carolina, or a team like Colorado, that are going to be clearly favorites against these squads. You’re playing against a Montreal Canadiens team where you should be able to generate offense, and they haven’t been able to have an answer.
You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Friday’s episode here…