The Buffalo Sabres‘ season-long problem reared its ugly head again in Wednesday’s 3-1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers.
Heading into Wednesday night’s matchup vs. Philadelphia, Jane McNally of the Sabres team site noted that Buffalo “…trailed by two or more goals in all but one game and have erased two-goal deficits in five games.”
That is an impressive statistic, because it shows that the Sabres are a team opponents can’t count out. For now, at least. Because the question is: How long can the Sabres keep this up until it starts taking a toll on them? Or better yet: How many winnable games will the Sabres end up losing because they find themselves in two-goal deficits early?
Nobody is coming back and winning all of those games, as the Sabres demonstrated on Wednesday. They went down 1-0 near the 15-minute mark after Cole Knuble snuck one past Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen to pick up his first career goal.
Trevor Zegras then scored on the power play at the 19:17 mark of the first, ensuring the Sabres would find themselves down by two goals yet again. Jason Zucker, making his season debut, scored at the 19:25 mark of the second period on the power play. For a few minutes, Zucker’s goal looked as though the Sabres would once again claw their way back into the game.
Then Knuble scored again at the 3:03 mark in the third period, giving himself a career game in his second NHL appearance. And the Sabres ran out of fuel.
Sabres Cannot Afford To Play Catch-Up Hockey All Season Long
The Sabres are tied with the Montreal Canadiens for next-to-last place in the Atlantic Division standings with 10 points. Thanks to a tiebreaker, the Sabres are considered to be in seventh place, just one spot ahead of the Detroit Red Wings. It should be no coincidence that the Red Wings have a nasty habit of falling behind early in games themselves.
While overcoming two-goal deficits often makes for an intriguing hockey team and storyline, it has so far been doing more harm than good for a team that came out of nowhere and won the Atlantic Division in 2025-26.
The losing effort vs. the Flyers was a perfect example of what happens when the Sabres are having a bad night overall and can’t dig their way out of the hole they fell into. Buffalo managed just 28 shots on goal, with 16 coming in the first period. They landed just five shots on goal in the third frame while trying to overcome another multi-goal deficit.
There Is A Silver Lining For The Sabres
The good news for the Sabres is that they got off to a rough start in 2025-26. Buffalo was 11-14-4 after 29 games and looked as though they were heading nowhere fast. Then they went on one of their greatest runs in franchise history that ended with a seven-game slugfest against the Canadiens in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals.
The Sabres still have a chance to get it together with 74 games remaining on the schedule. If their outing vs. the Flyers and the previous matchups putting them down by two goals taught them anything, it is that they must figure out how to carry a sense of urgency throughout the entire 60 minutes of play.
Buffalo will get another chance at doing just that on Saturday when they face the Washington Capitals.
Sabres’ Latest Loss Exposes Cost Of Constant Comebacks