Foligno: Wild slumping, but 'I'd rather be in this position than Buffalo'

The Buffalo Sabres caught a stray from Minnesota Wild forward Marcus Foligno after his team fell 2-1 to Utah on Friday night.

"We're fighting through it now. We're in a little bit of a sludge and just gotta go through it. It takes all of us to get ourselves out of it," he said. "I mean, I'd rather be in this position than Buffalo. So, you know what, it's not that bad."

The Sabres drafted Foligno in the fourth round in 2009. He spent the first six seasons of his career in Buffalo before being traded to the Wild as a restricted free agent in 2017.

Minnesota has now dropped four of its last five games - all of which were on home ice - after a stellar 19-5-4 start to the campaign.

However, Foligno's former team is currently having a significantly worse time.

Buffalo is 31st overall in the league with an 11-18-4 record after its losing streak was extended to 12 games courtesy of Friday's 6-3 defeat against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Sabres had a hard time scoring over this skid - generating just 2.25 tallies per game - but it certainly didn't help that they had two goals called back versus Toronto.

The first occurred early in the opening frame when Alex Tuch thought he'd tied the game at 1-1. The goal was eventually disallowed after the linesman informed referees of a high-sticking double-minor committed by forward Jason Zucker earlier in the play.

Buffalo wound up on the penalty kill, and Auston Matthews doubled the Leafs' lead on the power play.

"I've never seen that before, to be honest," Zucker said. "I don't know what else to say."

He added, "I'm not gonna comment on the play. I'd rather not get fined."

Section 78.5 of the NHL rulebook states:

When a linesperson reports a double-minor penalty for high-sticking, a major penalty, or a match penalty to the referee following the scoring of a goal by the offending team, the goal must be disallowed and the appropriate penalty assessed.

Later in the contest, the Sabres appeared to make it 5-4 late in the third period, but the Maple Leafs successfully challenged for goaltender interference.

"That's where we're at right now," Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin said. "We scored five, but two get disallowed. But we can't hang our heads, we did this to ourselves. We've got to work."

Zucker seemed to agree with Dahlin's point of view.

"I think you gotta earn your breaks, and we're not doing that right now," he said.

The Sabres and Wild will meet in Minnesota on March 22. The two teams last squared off on Nov. 27 when Buffalo lost 1-0 to kick off its current skid.