The Buffalo Sabres completed the road portion of the 2024-25 regular season schedule with a 7-4 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday. The Sabres can point to many reasons why their playoff drought is now 14 straight seasons, but their woeful record away from Key Bank Center is near or at the top.
The Sabres ended up with a record of 13-24-4 on the road (the fourth-worst record in the NHL), with only Boston, Nashville, and Chicago having more regulation losses than Buffalo. That was a decline from their .500 record on the road last year (18-18-5) and pretty much negated any success they achieved at home, where they have gone 13-2 in their last 15 games and have climbed to 17th in the NHL with a 22-14-3 record.
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“We lost puck battles, got on the wrong side of the puck, and (were) poor defensively,” Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff said after the loss. “When you can match their energy, you have to take care of the puck. You look at a couple goals, we’ve got the puck, and don’t execute, and it turns into a goal for them.”
The club’s defensive play is an obvious issue that contributed to the Sabres issues on the road. In 41 games, they finished 8th in the NHL with 125 goals scored (3.04 goals per game), but they were tied for 30th in goals allowed with 154 (3.76 GAA). This can partly be attributed to starter Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen not matching his performance from the second half last year, but for a club that was supposed to be more focused on being more efficient defensively, Buffalo under Ruff has been unable to clean things up in their own end that is essential to playing a winning brand of hockey.
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