During a recent stretch, the Buffalo Sabres returned to the defensive structure that played a key part in their success last season after they struggled to do so for the first few weeks of the current campaign.
But that concentrated effort has gotten away from the Sabres in the past two games, and they will look to find it again when they kick off a six-game trip with a visit to the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday night.
The Sabres are coming off an 8-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday. Buffalo trailed 4-0 with about seven minutes left in the second period before scoring a pair of goals late in the frame to cut the deficit in half. The Sabres added another goal 33 seconds into the third period to get within one.
But then Nikita Kucherov scored a natural hat trick to snuff out the Buffalo rally.
“We can’t give up 2-on-1s, 3-on-1s, 2-on-1s. We’re beating ourselves,” Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin said. “We have to look ourselves in the mirror after this one. I know we can play really good hockey. We’ve proven that, but we have to do it consistently. Today was not good.”
In Buffalo’s previous outing, a 4-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday, odd-man rushes and breakaways were at the forefront, along with a power play that couldn’t deliver. Buffalo trailed 2-0 after the second period and cut the deficit to 2-1 early in the third, but a Vegas tally less than 90 seconds later cooled things off.
“I think when we play how we want to play, we’re pretty dangerous,” Sabres forward Tage Thompson said. “It’s when that starts going well for us, we start to feel a little too good about ourselves and try to do things that are outside of our game, our identity that we want to play to. And when we do that, then we find ourselves chasing and making turnovers and just hurting ourselves, honestly.”
The Blackhawks, meanwhile, enter Thursday’s game after a woeful loss of their own, 9-2 to the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday. The Blackhawks held a players-only meeting after the game, which marked their sixth straight defeat and ninth in their past 10 games (1-8-1).
“I think we’re giving teams easy chances, and that’s not good in the NHL, when teams are as good as they are,” Chicago captain Connor Bedard said. “They’re going to create their own chances sometimes and that’s part of it, but when you give them free looks and put that stress on our goalies, it’s tough. So just clean it up in areas like that.”
Injuries haven’t helped. Defenseman Bowen Byram, acquired from Buffalo in June with forward Jordan Greenway for defenseman Louis Crevier and a pair of picks (Nos. 4 and 45) in the 2026 NHL Draft, has missed the past 11 games with an upper-body injury.
Veteran winger Patrick Kane has been out since Nov. 2, also with an upper-body ailment.
Both are practicing and are day-to-day, but return dates have yet to be determined.
“We’re going to get better when they get back, but that’s not an excuse. We don’t want to even think about that,” Bedard said.
