{"id":763119,"date":"2026-04-30T06:36:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T06:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/763119\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T06:36:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T06:36:25","slug":"the-sabres-had-every-opportunity-to-win-game-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/763119\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sabres had every opportunity to win Game 5."},"content":{"rendered":"

Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) – <\/strong>The Buffalo Sabres had Wednesday off, but Lindy Ruff did speak to the media. He had unfortunate news on Noah Ostlund who left Tuesday\u2019s game after Casey Mittelstadt accidentally landed on his leg. Ruff said,<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to miss a period of time, news wasn\u2019t good, I don\u2019t know exactly how much right now, but he\u2019s going to miss some time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruff confirmed Josh Norris is ready to go, so I would anticipate Norris back on his line with Josh Doan and Zach Benson for Game 6 in Boston on Friday.<\/p>\n

The Sabres missed a chance to Tuesday to close out the Bruins losing in overtime 2-1. Jason Zucker had a glorious chance in overtime to win the game as he has just about half the net to shoot at. He said he had thought he had scored, but one thing got in the way,<\/p>\n

\u201cIt kind of popped out and unfortunately it hit Quinny, I thought it was going in but it\u2019s just one of those bounces and I thought I had an empty net and that\u2019s the way it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zucker hasn\u2019t scored in this series and has had awful luck. In 57 career Stanley Cup Playoff games the winger has scored nine goals and 10 assists for 19 points. He had playoff games with the Nashville Predators, Pittsburgh Penguins and Minnesota Wild. In this series he\u2019s hit posts, legs, bodies and goalies. He said,<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the playoffs, it\u2019s the way it works, you\u2019ve just got to stick with it, we\u2019re still confident in our group and we\u2019re in a good position right now and we\u2019ve got to win one game.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as Tuesday goes, either team could\u2019ve won in an evenly matched game there were still things Zucker didn\u2019t like,<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t think our forecheck was as good as it was the last couple of games, but it\u2019s a long series, everyone\u2019s making adjustments and trying new things and we\u2019ve got to regroup.”<\/p>\n

Ruff didn\u2019t think his team reacted well to the pressure of an elimination game. He said,<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the start of the game, the power play goal we got off to a good start, but I just sensed a little bit of nerves with our guys, our puck play wasn\u2019t as good as it was in Boston, so just get them to relax, play our game and be ready to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought with the lead we sensed we\u2019ve got this lead and I thought at times we were just a little bit safe with our play where we needed to just stay on our toes and stay aggressive and more puck pressure I thought we deferred to playing a safer game.\u201d<\/p>\n

The road team has won 21 games in the playoffs so far with the home team winning 15. That means the home team has just 42% of the time. Ruff said,<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of distractions at home, and it\u2019s hard, you have a lot of family, you\u2019ve got friends, there\u2019s a lot more going on at home for you as a player I believe than there is on the road. You\u2019re kind of in quarantine, you\u2019re at the hotel, we have team meals, you\u2019re a little more in isolation, you\u2019re away from family and friends and kids, but that\u2019s all things you have to deal with.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think sometimes the road team can play a little bit different game and it can frustrate the home team too at times.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sabres will have practice in Buffalo on Thursday before leaving for Boston. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) – The Buffalo Sabres had Wednesday off, but Lindy Ruff did speak to the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":763120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[42],"tags":[3103,1720,224225,293264,293,62,67,132,68,289120],"class_list":["post-763119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-boston-bruins","tag-buffalo-sabres","tag-jason-zucker","tag-lindy-ruff","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wgr"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116492277441629013","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}