Senators should be closer to the playoffs, but have lost points in Buffalo losses

Ottawa – When you check your colleague Dom Luszyszyn’s Occasion model of the playoffs Tuesday morning, the possibilities of Playoffs of the Senators of Ottawa should still be 100 %close. They rightly earned the playoff pillow that they built so late in the season.

But the senators of this year will have to enter the post-stage with a bad imperfection in their regular season record: four losses at the hands of Buffalo’s humble Sabre. Or perhaps not so humble now: the 5-2 victory of the Sabres about the senators on Tuesday evening helped them skip the Boston Bruins from the bottom of the Eastern Conference ranking.

“You don’t want to lose four times to a team in your conference,” said senators Jake Sanderson’s defender. “It was a difficult pill to swallow.”

The loss of Tuesday evening – not a joke in April of April – was the second to Buffalo in a week, a “frustrating” end of their seasonal series while the senators try to play the playoffs for the first time since 2017 and allow their fans to issue a long sigh of relief in the process.

Feel your eyes if you don’t want to feel worse: if you count all the objectives in all four matches this year, Buffalo has increased by 17-5 in aggregate.

“It’s a funny alloy,” said the striker of Senators Claude Giroux.

So why do the sabers give them so many problems? Is it their rhythm? Strong goalkeeper performances are contrasted by the goalkeeper lower than Ottawa? The mistakes of the senators who cost them while they could not capitalize on their own? The senators experienced all this Tuesday evening at the Canadian Tire Center.

“It is quite evident that we fought to play against them this year,” Sanderson said. “I don’t know if it’s the way they play. Only that type of game game, ability at the top or anything else. But we have to understand it.”

The coach of senators Travis Green felt that his team played on Tuesday with a high level of urgency. It was not completely outside the basis to say it: the senators dominated five out of five and on the occasion of high possibilities, but they were unable to break the dam behind the goalkeeper of Sabres James Reimer.

“If you intend to criticize the first period,” added Green, “it is easy to say no urgency, (but) we obrivated the (Sabres) two to one in the first.”

Contrary to Green’s belief, there were breaks in the play sens’ in the first and second period in which they could not go up. Buffalo was out of reach, but when they had their possibilities, they exploited their best. Tage Thompson’s second period with Jj Peterka was practically beaten. Ottawa replied just over a minute later but did not threaten enough. The Potenza game of Ottawa finished 0-for-4 in the loss, including three possibilities for the game of power lost in the first period.

I’m not sure what is best, the move or the passage on this goal of Tage Thompson 😳 pic.twitter.com/uxgdtr1oym

– NHL (@Nhl) April 2, 2025

“Get three power games, hope to have one,” said Green. “I thought they had some momentum from their killing. The way we play the game, we hope to wear the team while we go to get more possibilities while we go. Just by chance, that’s exactly what happened.”

The senators played without their captain Brady Tkachuk, who was put aside with an injury to the upper body that he suffered on Sunday against the penguins. Tkachuk’s emotions and physical ability were seriously necessary against the Sabre.

“It’s certainly difficult,” Sanderson said. “It is the heart and soul of our team. It brings a lot of energy and physicality to our team. We lacked a lot tonight.”

But it’s not as if Tkachuk has lost all the other meetings against Buffalo this year. In those games, Tkachuk tried to arouse the pot or scored in an attempt to gather his troops. The inability of Ottawa to defeat Buffalo this season is much more than not having their captain.

“Honestly, I feel like I had to respect every single championship team,” Sanderson said when he was asked what he could learn from the loss of Tuesday. “Such a team, they are out of the playoffs. But they will still come out hard. They will come hard every single night. They pride play hockey, play. It is on us to do the same to do the job.”

The possibilities of the senators to make the playoffs remain high with eight remaining games. The hardest stretch of those eight games comes this week. Tampa Bay and Florida are both on the document, with Columbus next Sunday as a second game of a back-to-back. Ottawa will once again have to dig from a potential slide since the teams below the standings are playing a little to keep to the surface.

If the senators had not wasted the opportunity to eliminate the Sabre throughout the year, they would have approached their post -stairs goal.

(Photo by Jiri Kulich and Drake Batherson: Marc Desrosiers / Image Images)