Lehner: Postgame rant aimed at Sabres as a group, starting with himself
Robin Lehner took some time Monday to clarify statements made after a loss to Vancouver the night before.
Following the 4-2 decision, Lehner made some bold statements about his Buffalo Sabres teammates, saying, "We win one game and we think we're Chicago ... We haven't done anything in this league." He also mentioned how some Sabres will try to do a deke or try to be fancy instead of sticking to the system.
Lehner now wants it to be made known he wasn't calling out Jack Eichel, or any one specific player for that matter.
"What I said yesterday was to be aimed at us as a group starting with myself all the way through the lineup," Lehner said, according to Paul Hamilton of WGR550. "We’ve got to take more responsibility. It’s not certain lines, it’s not certain people, it’s literally all of us on a day-to-day basis."
Lehner continued:
I didn’t name anyone, I said we. It’s not about (Eichel's) line, it’s not about me, it’s not about (Rasmus) Ristolainen, it’s about all of us as a team, it’s about doing the small things. It’s about me making an extra save, Jack is our best player, end of story. When he’s going, we’re all going, but when he’s not going, we’ve got to have other guys going.
We’ve got to help each other out, if he makes a mistake or I make a mistake, we’ve got to bail each other out and I would never put anyone in the spotlight, that’s never what I said, and at the end of the day, it was a team loss, it wasn’t a line loss, it wasn’t an individual loss.
Coach Dan Bylsma wasn't bothered by Lehner's comments, and didn't really disagree either.
"As a team we’ve had opportunities at different times this year in big games to get back in the race and it’s disappointing to see that in almost every one of those situations, we haven’t risen to the occasion and that’s the challenge and growth of our team," Bylsma said.
The loss to Vancouver gave Buffalo a record of 23-23-10 through 56 games, putting them five points out of a playoff spot.