Dismal Season-Opening Loss For The Buffalo Sabres

It was a huge sell-out season-opening crowd for Thursday night's Buffalo Sabres game at Key Bank Arena and the Sabres gave the fans absolutely nothing to get excited about in a 4-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens.  Well, there was that power play goal by Matt Moulson at the beginning of the third period to cut the Canadiens lead in half 2-1, but that was about it.

The Sabres looked an awful lot like last year's team, generating chances, but just unable to convert those chances into goals.  The Sabres seemed to get a little life with Moulson's goal, but the Canadiens pretty much snuffed out Buffalo's hopes for a comeback when Brendan Gallagher scored his second goal of the game and when the Canadiens made it 4-1 there was a mass exodus for the exits.

This game may have been lost the day before when the Sabres best player, Jack Eichel, went down with a serious ankle injury that will likely keep him out of action for two months.  Then the Sabres lost another key player when Evander Kane went down hard into the end boards and writhed in pain on the ice for several minutes until he was taken to the hospital to be checked out.  After the game the Sabres declined to reveal exactly what the injury was.

So after a home opening loss the Sabres head onto to the road for a four-game trip that will take them to Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Philadelphia before returning home to host Minnesota on Thursday, October 27th.