The unfortunate familiar territory of an extended losing streak
Even though the Buffalo Sabres current streak is at 13 games, for a few current players, this isn't their first time dealing with a staggering run of defeats.
ELMONT, NY — As the Buffalo Sabres go barreling into the Christmas break with one more game to go against the New York Islanders on Monday night, they’re aiming to put an end to a 13-game losing streak that saw them last win a game a month ago today in San Jose.
This particular losing streak has been extremely difficult because it’s highlighted how close games can be and how wins and losses can get flipped in an instant. One bad break or poor puck decision can, and has, turned games on their head repeatedly over the past month. While all anyone is going to remember are the losses and not how close or not the games were, skids like these are fertile ground for hyperbole.
We could get into the weeds comparing past super-long streaks and point out how this year’s Sabres team is light years better than the 2014-2015 team that had a 14-game losing streak in which they went 0-14-0.
They’re infinitely better than the 2020-2021 team that lost 18 consecutive games and went 0-15-3 during the COVID-19 truncated season as well, but that team had the unfortunate side effect of introducing a handful of current Sabres leaders to how bad things can get. During that 56-game season, seven current players suited up at some point, some much more often than others.
Rasmus Dahlin played in every game that year and was third on the team in scoring. Tage Thompson had 14 points in 38 games. Dylan Cozens made his NHL debut that year and played 41 games and amassed four goals and nine points as a 19-year-old. Henri Jokiharju was 21 years old and in his second season with Buffalo and put up eight points in 46 games. Jacob Bryson had nine points in 38 games.
Mattias Samuelsson split that season in Rochester and made his NHL debut and played 12 games. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen was one of six goalies to play for Buffalo that year and, at 21 years old, he also made his NHL debut and started four games.
This season’s slide is giving them the opportunity to have flashbacks to a brutal season and looking back on how bad things were then doesn’t soften the blow for how things have gone over the past month.
"I don't really remember the details of it too much, to be honest, I've written that whole year off, but…” Cozens said, paused, and exhaled the kind of way where it sounds like the propeller on a motorboat slowing down. “It just sucks and it's horrible, and it sucks that we're going through it again. I think the one thing you say you can take away is you can't get too down or else it's going to just keep coming and keep coming. You have to just, as hard as it is, just try to put it behind you and go out and try to win the next game."
Trying to compare direly long losing streaks is in itself a losing effort. Losses hurt regardless of whether or not the team gets a point out of the game or not and these current Sabres who have had this kind of brutal experience once before can’t stand it and cannot wait to get a win and, hopefully, turn the season around.
“You can't do anything about the game you just played, you've got to move on,” Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin said. “You need a fresh mind every single day. It's a new game. I don't even want to think about last time, but you know, you can't do anything about it except work hard as possible every single day."
There’s a famous scene from “Ted Lasso” in which the titular character played by Jason Sudeikis shared his own folksy wisdom to one of his key players, Sam Obisanya, when he was upset about getting upended at practice and struggling. Lasso told him to “be a goldfish” because a goldfish has a 10-second memory. In typical sitcom style, that advice comes in handy later on to great success, but the lesson of letting bad things go, forgetting about them and moving on is vital for every player, especially those on a team going through a run like the Sabres are dealing with.
For guys like Dahlin and Cozens, going through that 18-game streak at their ages—Cozens was 19 while Dahlin was 20 and in his third season already—that time could’ve been formative in the worst ways. A lot gets forgotten about that bizarre COVID season, but for a team that did as poorly as the Sabres during that year, erasing it from the memory banks was easy enough to do despite the drama.
After all, that season saw GM Kevyn Adams fire coach Ralph Krueger and replaced him with then-interim Don Granato.
"Obviously that was a pretty tough time, especially that being my first year, too,” Cozens said. “I was hurt for some of it as well so there was a lot going through my head during that streak. I don't really think I learned that much from it other than how much it sucks."
Being a rookie that year, Cozens handled himself well, especially considering all of the circumstances just off the ice, never mind what happened on it. It was the year they signed Eric Staal and Taylor Hall to help them compete and attempt to make a run at the playoffs with Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart. Instead, Eichel’s neck injury against the Islanders put him out of action after 21 games and with it went the motivation of Hall and Staal while the team sank in the standings.
That kind of veteran presence could’ve been massively detrimental to the young players who were destined to stick around for the years to come. Fortunately for Buffalo, the players leading the way now aren’t using that as an example of how to handle a difficult time during a long season.
"It's on us, it's on the little bit older guys, too, to try and help the young guys,” Dahlin said. “It's not super easy to come into an NHL team as a young guy with no veterans that tells them what to do and stuff. We have some and they're doing a great job, but for myself, I've got to step up here and help everyone in the room. I've gone through some stuff, and I can help. I think it's up to us as a group to step up a couple notches individually."
You could say Dahlin’s gone through some stuff all right. He’s in his seventh season and playing for his fourth different head coach on a team that’s on its second GM since he debuted in 2018. And while it all hasn’t been bad for Dahlin, the good things have been outnumbered and enduring yet another extended winless streak like this adds to the list.
This streak, unlike the others, is different. They haven’t been outclassed in every game like they were in 2021 or 2014-2015. This time around, they’ve had their fair share of being deeply unlucky and occasionally just getting beat by a really good opponent. Yes, there have been some stinkers, a few of them more recently which has helped make this streak taste more bitter, but a bounce here or there in more than a few of these games and there’s no streak to speak of. It’s NHL life on a razor’s edge.
"I almost think it's more frustrating knowing that we should've won a bunch of these games that we end up losing,” Cozens said. “We've blown leads, we've let teams back in it when they shouldn't have been in the game, and I think that makes it more frustrating knowing we had the game and just gave it away. Or even games where we did play well and just couldn't get one behind the goalie—there was a couple of games like that, the one against Minnesota—but at the end of the day, you've got to find a way to win, and we haven't been able to do that."