Sabres game day: Don Granato, Sabres aiming to avoid more 'lapses of confidence' vs. Montreal

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The same issue became apparent when Don Granato and his staff tried to diagnose what's gone wrong with the Buffalo Sabres during their four-game losing streak.

"I felt the last few games there’s just an inkling of doubt potentially creeping in, and I challenged our guys there can be no doubt," Granato said following the morning skate Friday. "I don’t care what just happened. I don’t care what just transpired, because when you have doubt, it looks like you don’t work hard anymore. You start hesitating and then it looks like guys aren’t working. We cannot have that."

When the Sabres have fallen apart recently, they reverted back to forcing bad passes on offense and failed to close on opponents trying to drive to their net. While poor goaltending is partially to blame, Buffalo has allowed 22 goals in its past four games.

The penalty kill has allowed nine power-play goals over the past six games to slip to 26th in the NHL. Montreal has performed poorly following its run to the Stanley Cup final in June, but the Canadiens' roster has the speed and skill to take advantage of any Sabres mistakes.

Granato isn't going to oversaturate his players with pre-scout information about Montreal. The focus is to correct the mistakes that have caused the Sabres to allow goals in bunches. Buffalo gave up four goals in 5:31 to Boston on Wednesday, three in 3:41 to Columbus on Monday and three in 5:26 Sunday night in Madison Square Garden.

"Their speed and their skill is evident, but we do have to get back to playing our game with confidence and consistently with confidence," said Granato. "We’ve had these lapses of confidence. We’ve talked about segments within games where one negative thing has happened and it spirals because we can’t kick back into a confident mode."

Lineup: We won't know the Sabres' starting goalie until warmups, but the personnel at forward and defense isn't expected to change. Winger Drake Caggiula will miss a second consecutive game and is out week to week with an upper-body injury. Goalie Craig Anderson remains out, and center Casey Mittelstadt is still working his way back from an upper-body injury. 

The new lines have Dylan Cozens centering Kyle Okposo and Arttu Ruotsalainen.

"I think they both can help each other," Granato said of Cozens and Okposo. "Obviously, Dylan is the talent he is and Okie has the experience he has with a pretty good feel for the game and skill level himself, so Okie is a leader on our team. Obviously, Dylan is a big part of things now and in the future. It’s nice to see they actually have some feel and read together. Just change things up and we want to see how that looks."

Drake Caggiula and Casey Mittelstadt are absent from the Sabres’ morning skate. pic.twitter.com/gewQzCmJav

— Lance Lysowski (@LLysowski) November 26, 2021

Tage Thompson continued to center the top line with Jeff Skinner and Victor Olofsson on the wing. Zemgus Girgensons skated between Anders Bjork and Rasmus Asplund, while Cody Eakin was with Vinnie Hinostroza and John Hayden.

Defensemen Will Butcher and Christian Wolanin are expected to be healthy scratches.

Opposition: With the Canadiens playing the first game of a back to back, they'll start backup goalie Samuel Montembeault, who owns an .897 save percentage in seven appearances this season. They'll use 11 forwards and seven defensemen against Buffalo.

Montreal has only two wins in its past 10 games. Since starting the season 5-1-1, the Sabres have gone 2-9-1.