The Sharks extend their losing skid to three, as they fall to the Buffalo Sabres 6-3 to finish their current road trip with a 1-3-0 record.
This one went similarly to yesterday’s game against the Senators. In addition, Team Teal seemed uncoordinated and burnt out as well. Tage Thompson scored the first goal of the game for the Sabres on the man advantage towards the halfway mark of the first period. The Sharks answered back about four minutes later on Nick Bonino's first goal of the year from Luke Kunin and Erik Karlsson. Kevin Labanc followed that up with his fifth goal of the season on the power play from Matt Benning and Matt Nieto to give the Sharks a 2-1 lead through one period of play, their first and only lead of the night.
Another trend that has occurred all too often with this Sharks team is only showing up for one period and disappearing for the rest of the game. It only took 16 seconds into the second period for the Sabres to tie the game via J.J. Peterka. Following this game-tying goal, Rasmus Dahlin leveled Matt Nieto in a huge hit as Nieto entered the Sabres' zone and was getting closer to the Buffalo net. Still early in the second period, Jeff Skinner scored the go-ahead goal for the Sabres, capitalizing on an untimely collision in the crease between Aaron Dell and Nick Cicek. Later on in the second, Jack Quinn scored his first goal of the game on the power play for the Sabres to extend Buffalo's lead to two.
Buffalo wasn't done yet; Jack Quinn tallied his second goal of the game in the later half of the third period to extend their lead to three. Oskar Lindblom got one back for the Sharks seconds later with his first goal of the season from Marc-Eduoard Vlasic and Logan Couture. The Sabres sealed the deal with about three-and-a-half minutes to go with an empty-netter from Alex Tuch to restore their three-goal lead.
Aaron Dell made 32 saves in only his second start of the season for the Sharks.
After the first game of this last road trip in Montreal, a lot has gone wrong for the Sharks. Also, the Sharks had one of the top penalty kill units in the NHL with around a 91 percent kill rate for much of this season, but that fell significantly to around 44 percent during the past two games of this road trip; not good. Team Teal will return home and have two days to recover from their past three games before they face the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday at 7:30 pm PT.
Sources: NBC Sports Bay Area/California, NHL App, Bay Area News Group
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