Mike Harrington: There's no reason for Sabres to have fear in their game. Just go play.

It's been Don Granato's message all season. Coming out of the All-Star break, it's one of the top themes the Buffalo Sabres' coach has to be pushing with his group.

This team isn't going anywhere in the standings. There's no playoff race. We didn't expect one and we're not getting one. This is about individual development leading to some team success. So there's no reason to hesitate, at all.

We saw good signs for about 30 minutes of the 4-3 overtime loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets. Tage Thompson's line got the message Thursday night. Thompson, Jeff Skinner and Alex Tuch were beasts on the puck. Peyton Krebs felt it, too.

Rasmus Dahlin was sensational at times, clearly carrying plenty of momentum from his All-Star appearance in Las Vegas – and even doing the goal celebration Buffalo Bills lineman Dion Dawkins' suggested he do when they met in T-Mobile Arena.

"We played loose. We played with a lot of confidence. We battled hard," Dahlin said. "We got momentum there going and could have a few more goals."

Could have used them. Everything seemed fine when Tuch scored 12 seconds into the third period to give the Sabres a 3-1 lead. Dustin Tokarski had been strong, stopping 25 of 26 shots with the only goal a first-period pinball off defenseman Mark Pysyk. But then he flubbed Brendan Gaunce's simple shot along the ice from the left wall at 4:48 of the third period, and it was a game again when it should not have been.

At 3-2, anything can happen, and it did. The Sabres didn't get some penalty calls they seemed to deserve in the offensive end, Kyle Okposo got a holding infraction that was legit, but not nearly as severe as some that were let go, and Buffalo couldn't kill it off as Oliver Bjorkstrand tied the game.

It went to overtime and was over in 16 seconds. Tage Thompson overplayed the puck in the neutral zone, Dahlin backed off too much and Tokarski's angle was poor as Jakub Voracek's wrister burned him for the game-winning goal.

Granato was musing after the morning skate that he was unhappy with his term's verve in recent weeks. We know injuries and Covid-19 have been a real problem, but too often, we haven't seen enough from the guys on the ice.

"We have to be better through longer stretches," Tuch said. "Sometimes we might have a bad shift, but we can't have back-to-back-to-back bad shifts where we're kind of hemmed in our own zone, not simplifying things and getting away from our game."

Granato even said the team's uneven play was among the factors in getting Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen more work in Rochester. No reason to throw a young guy into the midst of an uneven effort when veterans like Craig Anderson and Tokarski are healthy enough to play and more suited to deal with a team's ups and downs.

Granato wants to see more fire out of this team. I'm all for it. Skate. Attack. Forecheck. Make some plays. Overcome adversity for once.

The Sabres have lost too many multi-goal leads to count this season. They've lost nine times when leading after two periods (10-3-6). No one else in the league has lost more than six in such spots.

What do good teams look like? Florida, Toronto and Carolina entered Thursday a combined 66-1-2 when leading after two periods. Yes, 66-1-2.

"It is a mental game, there's no question," Granato said. "You have to keep fighting through it. You just do.  Your belief system has to maintain strength. This is what makes or breaks you. how you deal with that psychologically, We've got to come out of this game, and it happened and you've got to just move forward. It's aggravating. It's frustrating, but we need to make sure our belief system is strong so our passion and energy show every every shift."

Earlier in the day, Granato was musing about how he's still trying to get his team to break through its hesitation, to pick up its pace and aggression. It was tough to do that in the first period after nine days off. The second period was appreciably better. But you push back against the Sabres just a little and they always seem to crack in some way. Goaltending is often at the top of the list.

But you can't solely blame Tokarski after he gave them 45 airtight minutes.

Victor Olofsson's last goal was on Halloween. Rasmus Asplund hasn't scored since Nov. 21. Anders Bjork has one goal since mid-November. Jacob Bryson (minus-11) was a healthy scratch on defense Thursday. Granato pointed out that first-time players on any team often play with less fear because they're saddled with as much failure. As people, the coach said, we get more conservative with age. Same with hockey careers.

"That is the advantage of having young guys. They're more fearless," Granato said. "And, sometimes, you get many situations you're actually working with the older guys more than you think in regard to that."

"Even if we don't like a call or not, we have to battle through it," Dahlin said. "We have to do all those small details. We've got to just play loose. Keep our momentum up, just go out there and have fun."

These kind of games just aren't fun. Especially when you can feel the end coming. Just like it did.