Game 13: Empty Calories

The only statistic that wasn't misleading in the Sabres 4-1 loss to the Coyotes was the score

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Usually when you see a 4-1 score line like we did Tuesday night for the Arizona Coyotes win against the Buffalo Sabres, that’s enough to tell you everything you needed to know about how it went. While that’s true in this case, a deeper look at the numbers might tell you otherwise.

Do not be fooled.

The shots on goal would have you believe that the Sabres outshooting the Coyotes 33-24 they may have been goalie’d by Arizona starter Karel Vejmelka. Somewhat accurate because a goalie still has to stop what’s thrown at him, but it never felt like he was really tested.

The advanced stats tell us the Sabres had eight high-danger scoring chances at 5-on-5 compared to the Coyotes’ three, but it’s difficult to recall anything that was a real threat to find its way past Vejmelka.

The Sabres did dominate in possession throughout the game and that was reflected in the CorsiFor numbers at 5-on-5. The Sabres out-attempted Arizona 47-23—more than two-thirds of the shot attempts in the game—and kept the Coyotes busy tracking them around their own zone.

But the shots never seemed to become or lead to true quality opportunities. That much did not go unnoticed.

“I don’t care what the stats said at all,” Sabres coach Don Granato said before taking questions in the postgame. “I don’t know what the stats said…We felt we wanted an easier game. We didn’t do what it took to maybe create more chances or score the goals we needed from identifying how the game was; get to the net enough, get pucks to the net.

“At the end of it, you look at it, we had three goals and one off the foot. The first one starting off Owen off a reverse and the next two off of us into our own net. That’s an indication of us not being ready like we should’ve been.“

Granato is always composed and level-headed in his postgame analysis and in dealing with our questions. Tuesday night, he was rightfully frustrated with the effort. It might seem strange that a coach whose team had an expected goals advantage of 71.7 percent would be so bothered by that, but sometimes numbers can lie as much as our eyes.

If there is something mildly encouraging out of a loss like this, it’s that the players are aware of the issue at hand.

“I think we could have done a better job getting more bodies to the net and getting some traffic,” Tage Thompson said. “I thought we played a good game though. I thought we controlled the pace. We had good o-zone possession. Sometimes you run into a hot goalie, or you just can’t find the back of the net. Just kind of what it is.”

Players don’t want to get too high or too low and they’re going to keep a positive mindset always. Not everyone will go Ryan O’Reilly style and fall on their own sword and accept any and all blame after every loss. And, honestly, one game is not the end of the world. A three-game slide isn’t great though, and the next two games at home feature Vegas, who comes in riding an eight-game winning streak, and Boston who sits at 11-2-0 and have won eight of the past nine games. It’s a little foreboding.

The most frustrating part about a loss like this is none of the Coyotes’ goals occurred due to skill plays.

The first goal happens because the puck took a bad hop off the boards/Owen Power and went right to the side of the net for Matias Maccelli to feed Lawson Crouse. That it happened 23 seconds into the game perhaps set the tone for it to be one of those games. Arizona’s next two goals found their way in off of Dylan Cozens, one off his skate while trying to kill a penalty and the other glanced off of his stick on a shot from the outside.

Three goals where there’s almost nothing you can do about them but shake your head and get back to it. But once Arizona got up 3-1 on Liam O’Brien’s goal off Cozens’ stick early in the third, they were able to clog up shooting and passing lanes and frustrate the Sabres for the final 17 minutes of the game. Sometimes just getting in the way is enough to get the results needed to win, fancy stats be damned.

“We didn’t play hard enough in the areas we need to play hard,” Granato said. “We were too slow, we hit goalposts. Their goalie, I thought, played real well, but the bottom line is we could’ve won a game, but we didn’t go attack a game like we needed to.

“We certainly could’ve won the game, but did we play the way we needed to play? No, we didn’t.”