Mike Harrington: Seriously now, that kind of Sabres loss just can’t happen

Now, I don’t agree with Granato here, but I can at least follow his point. And if Tage Thompson’s headlong dive at the puck barely misses pushing it into the empty net, Sean Couturier can’t score the game-tying goal with 1:29 to go.

In the overtime, Dahlin and Casey Mittelstadt simply overplayed their hand. There’s a balance between going for it and not getting caught. The two first-round picks didn’t strike it and they got burned. 

“There was no balance,” Granato said of the 2-on-1 that led to Ivan Provorov’s game-winner. “We can use that to learn and we have to learn fast. We pressed too much. There was no panic there. We just tried to score too darn bad. We didn’t read situations. We lost our patience.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Dahlin said. “I tried to play the puck, they get a 2-on-1 and they score.”

The Sabres are now 0-13-2 this month. They’re winless in their last 11 games at home (0-9-2). They still haven’t beaten anyone not named the New Jersey Devils since Jan. 26. And they couldn’t snap their maddening March string without a regulation win that’s now at 35 games (3-28-4) since 2018.

“There were so many hurdles. There were so many things that just didn’t line up the way we had in mind,” said Staal, who was traded to the Canadiens on Friday for two draft picks. 

Earlier in the day, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman – who has become one of the most influential names in the sport – wrote in his weekly “31 Thoughts” column, “I will admit this even if it makes me look unprofessional, but I’m rooting for a Buffalo victory. No one deserves this level of on-ice misery in such a mentally challenging isolation season.”