Eichel empathized with Olofsson regarding the play in overtime, saying that Olofsson was simply trying to score a goal and that he'd been in that same situation before. Their coach agreed that the late mishap didn't overshadow what was otherwise an impressive debut.
"I thought [Eichel and Reinhart] brought a steady influence and him and really took him under their wing and tried to help him," Housley said. "But he played his own game. He was shooting the puck, he was creating offensively, his wall play was very good. He was very poised."
Olofsson wasn't shy about utilizing his shot whenever possible, which he says is a nightly objective. He thought he had Howard beat in the third, when he caught a feed from Eichel and hit the crossbar.
"Yeah, I thought so," he said. "The puck was standing up a little bit, so I shot it a little bit higher than I wanted to. It would have been nice if that had gone in."
Olofsson and the other young members of the Sabres provided a silver lining on a night when they were unable to get a result, a potential glimpse of what might be to come both in Rochester's playoff run this spring and in Buffalo's future.
Even so, with five games remaining, Eichel remained focused on turning the results in their favor moving forward.
"They bring a spark this time of year," Eichel said of his rookie teammates. "We talked the other night, everyone's playing for something right now and I thought a lot of our young guys brought some really good energy and they fit right in. It was good to see that, on the back end all the way through up front.
"It's good that we didn't quit there, we were down two goals twice and we had some good resiliency, but it's unfortunate. We want to get on the right side of these ones and start feeling good about ourselves here."