from Amy Moritz of the Buffalo News,

If there was an opportunity for the Buffalo Sabres to break out of their scoring drought, this would have been the night to do it.

The Sabres were facing Tristan Jarry, the backup goaltender for the Pittsburgh Penguins who was playing just his sixth NHL game. There was an opening to pepper the young goalie with shots and force him to make uncomfortable plays. There was an opening to finally score some goals.

But they didn't.

Instead, the Sabres were shutout for the third straight game -- a first in franchise history -- in a 4-0 loss to the Penguins in KeyBank Center Friday night. They have now gone 180 minutes and 51 seconds without a goal....

"It's quite embarrassing," Sabres coach Phil Housley said. "Our coaching staff comes up with a game plan and I just don't think we're executing our game plan. Obviously we go into Montreal and we're up against a good goaltender. Vasilevskiy is one of the best goaltenders in the league but in playing a backup goaltender, I didn't think we took advantage of that tonight. We came close but you can't give a good team like that two goals to start the game. They're going to lock that in. You saw today that even though we had some fight in the third period. But the bottom line it is embarrassing."

read on

Watch the game highlights below...

added 9:05am, Mike Harrington of the Bufffalo News is below too...