Robin Lehner Says Buffalo Sabres Being Disrespectful

As the Buffalo Sabres continue to display an inability to perform consistently, Robin Lenher puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the players.

The Buffalo Sabres have been inconsistent all season, while Robin Lehner has a penchant for speaking his mind. As such, we should have known he would have something to say at some point.

The Sabres once again followed up an excellent display with a poor outing in the next game. In particular, it was the second period that proved to be their undoing, as they lost 4-2 to the Vancouver Canucks, just one night after an impressive 3-1 win in Toronto.

Lehner had no doubt who was to blame, as he told WGR550 and the rest of the media: “It’s not even disappointing anymore…(I’m) starting to get angry. This is all talk.

“We gotta look ourselves in the mirror here. I think it’s disrespectful when we have a gameplan and we’re going through things.”

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Sunday night’s loss epitomized the issues the Sabres have had all season in the second period. They conceded two goals and scored none themselves, as they were outshot 12-5 by the Canucks.

For the 2016-17 campaign as a whole, Buffalo has a -22 goal difference in the second period. By comparison, they are +5 in the first and -1 in the third.

What makes this so frustrating for Lehner, is the fact coach Dan Bylsma has been concentrating recently on rectifying the struggles in the middle frame: “”Coach is drawing it up there, coming up with a good gameplan. We do the exact opposite, we don’t do what he said.”

“That gets me angry. I think it gets a lot of guys angry. It’s disrespectful, I think is the word.”

In fairness to the 25-year old, even though he was visibly frustrated, he sounded very calm when addressing the media. (This was in stark contrast to his verbal sparring match with Alexandre Burrows, after the forward scored what turned out to the game-winner.)

Often when things are going badly, the first thing you need to do is look in the mirror and assess your own performance. However, Lehner has arguably done his part.

Consider that the 2009 second round draft pick has a .923 save percentage and 2.57 goals against average on the season. Both are more than respectable figures, and better than his career averages (.918 and 2.74 respectively), while having already set a new personal-best for starts in a season.

Bylsma recently said Lehner has played extremely well this season, despite a lack of help at times from his teammates. The goaltender’s record of 14-16-6 seems to bare this out.

Another part of the issue for the Swedish native, is he believes the players get too carried away. More specifically, whenever they get a win against one of the better teams in the league.

Lehner said: “We haven’t done anything in this league. Gio’s won a Cup, with all respect to him, he’s done something in this league. The rest of us haven’t. End of story.

“We gotta stop thinking after we win a game we’re Chicago or Boston. Who we think we are, I don’t know.”