The Penguins looked good, debuting their incredible Retro Reverse jerseys, and they felt good. When Jason Zucker opened the scoring in the first period, he celebrated with the iconic Jaromir Jagr salute, saying it was something that had been discussed with Jake Guentzel and Bryan Rust.
"I have to give credit to Rusty and Guentz. That was their idea," Zucker told AT&T Sports rinkside reporter Dan Potash during the first intermission. "I just happened to get the goal before them. Whoever scored, hopefully one of us was (laughs), was going to do it. Shoutout to Jagr and that whole team."
After the Penguins took a 2-1 lead into the second intermission, Guentzel did get on the board just eight seconds into the third period with a power-play goal. But from there, everything turned.
The Sabres scored five unanswered goals in the final frame to earn a 6-3 victory. The first one came on the power play, the next two came at even strength and the final pair were into the empty net. The Penguins, who were also on the wrong end of a comeback win on Tuesday night against Boston, have now gone 0-5-1 in their last six after starting the season 4-0-1.
Here's what head coach Mike Sullivan had to say after the game.
On how they did some things they wanted in terms of puck management during the first 30 minutes, and what changed in the last 30 minutes: "Well, I just didn't think we went at them as hard, you know. There was probably about a five-minute span in the second period where we got on our heels a little bit and we allowed to come at us. But the first part of the game, I thought we did a pretty good job of just creating offense off our defense. We got a number of 2-on-1's and odd-man rushes just by defending hard and making good decisions with the puck. Winning the wall battles, getting pucks behind their defenseman and getting in foot races. And then I thought in the third period, or the second part of the game, we just didn't do as good a job at beating the pressure on the walls, and just recognizing danger and making simple plays."
On how much could this team use a big save or a big period out of a goaltender right now:"I thought Case competed hard tonight. He made some stops for us. The goals that they got were pretty good looks. So I don't know if that was the case tonight. I just think we've got to be better as a team. We've got to find a way to get some swagger back in our game. When you go through struggles like this, we're all human beings, everybody cares. Everybody wants to be part of the solution. And so, we've got to go back to work. We've got to make sure that we reset our mindset here and figure out what we can take from this one. This one stings, without a doubt. But we're going to have to figure out what we can take from it and try to become a better team."
On what it will take to restore that confidence:"I think it just takes a little bit of success. I think it starts with one shift, one goal, one period… a power-play goal, a blocked shot, a big penalty kill. I think it boils down to a lot of little things that add up to win games. And you know, for me, that's where our focus needs to be. It needs to be on the process. We can't get overwhelmed by the circumstance here because we haven't won a handful of games. We just got to make sure that we stay in the moment, we focus on the process because that's what's going to give us the best opportunity to dig our way out of it."
