Anaheim's latest loss hurt even more. The Ducks led Vancouver 4-1 going into the 3rd period, gave up 4 goals in that period, and lost 6-5 when Filip Hronek scored 4:49 into overtime. That ended a Canucks skid dating back to October 3. Greer, Sennecke and Carlsson all scored, so the offense showed up. A short-handed blue line couldn't hold the lead.
That blue line is the story in Anaheim. Pavel Mintyukov went on injured reserve with a lower-body injury, and Joel Quenneville says Ian Moore is still "a ways from skating." The Ducks are also without Ryan Poehling, who is out 6-8 weeks with an MCL sprain, and Troy Terry, who is on long-term IR with a hip injury. Quenneville's read on the road trip was that the Rangers game was the only one where they looked behind the whole night and that they "fought back in the other games." Fair enough, but fighting back doesn't help much when you can't close.
Buffalo's list is longer: Danforth, Carrick, Grzelcyk, Timmins and Rathbone are all out on top of Kulich and Lyon. Owen Power has 9 points from the back end and has given the Sabres a steady presence, but the Washington loss looked like the rest of their season. They were in the game and gave it away in one bad stretch. Anaheim is giving up goals in bunches, so the Sabres will get chances to score. What matters is whether they can stay organized for all 60 minutes, which they haven't managed lately.
Puck drop is 7:00 PM PT. One team has been losing coin-flip games and the other has been losing games it was winning. A lot of their recent games have gone late, so don't be surprised if this one does too.