ATLANTA - The April fool's on you, Sabres fans.

But this one was no joke.

A fourth loss to the 13th-place team in the Eastern Conference should tell you once and for

all that, barring something wholly unexpected, there will be no playoff hockey in Buffalo for

the second straight spring.

Oh sure, the Sabres still have six games left to make up a five-point deficit so the math

says it's possible. But after Thomas Vanek gift-wrapped a 3-2 overtime victory to the lowly

Atlanta Thrashers Wednesday night in Philips Arena, how realistic is the math?

With a shootout looming, Vanek committed a cardinal sin just inside the Atlanta blue line

as the last man back and it cost his team a valuable point in the standings.

Trying to circle the puck an extra time rather than get it safely deep into the zone, Vanek

shot it right off Thrashers star Ilya Kovalchuk, who sped away on a clear breakaway for more

than half the rink.

Kovalchuk made no mistake, beating Ryan Miller between the legs for his 41st goal of the

season with 29.9 seconds left in the OT.

"I gave their best player a breakaway to lose the game for us," said Vanek, whose enormous

gaffe more than wiped out his pair of power-play goals. "It's disappointing. My first thought

was to get it deep on my backhand but I thought I had a little bit of time. ... It was a

stupid play. Just get it down low and give my teammates a chance to get that extra point. This

one is on me and it doesn't feel very good."

The Sabres get one point, of course, but they finish 0-0-4 against the Thrashers this

season.

Two losses in overtime and two via shootout to the 13th-place team in the East. Not the

recipe to extend the season past Game 82. So with six games left, the Sabres (83 points) are

five behind Montreal and four behind Florida.

"We're well aware of it. You can see it on everybody's face in here," Miller said in a

starkly quiet dressing room. "We had our chances to win and we lose out on a point. It's not

good enough. You've got to find a way. No matter how good we were in certain parts of the

game, we have to be better."

The Sabres failed in their bid for their first four-game winning streak since January. The

Thrashers, meanwhile, won their third straight and are 10-3 in their last 13.

The Sabres had a 32-30 advantage in shots but Johan Hedberg stoned them repeatedly. In

overtime, Hedberg robbed Jason Pominville on a slap shot directly off a Derek Roy faceoff win.

Roy was stopped on a breakaway inside the final five minutes of regulation and Buffalo

couldn't score on the power play that resulted when Roy was hooked either as Pominville was

stopped and Jaroslav Spacek fanned on a one-timer with an open net in his radar.

"You don't finish those opportunities, you end up losing a point," said coach Lindy Ruff.

"Thomas had a couple of goals but then [made] a tough mistake, a tough mistake to the wrong

guy."

The announced crowd of 15,038 that was probably no more than half of that featured a huge

contingent of Let's-Go-Buffalo-chanting fans. And they watched in horror as Vanek's misplay

unfolded.

"He's got to keep driving," Ruff said. "Thomas scored a couple goals. He looked pretty

good. There were a couple plays he should have gotten deep. That one there should have been

deep. He was just trying to make something happen."

Vanek scored power-play goals in each of the first two periods, with Roy assisting both. It

gave him 37 goals for the season and marked his first multigoal game since returning from a

broken jaw.

Small consolation.

"Spacek got it to me wide and one of their guys kind of cut me off and I turned back,"

Vanek said of the key miscue. "I saw three Atlanta guys up high and I was trying to shoot it

on net. I saw two of our guys in front and tried to get it to them."

Vanek said it was a sick feeling to trail the play seeing Kovalchuk go down the ice.

"It wasn't very fun. I knew I was going to hear it from Lindy and I still will. Deservedly

so."

"I could have bailed him out. I don't feel too good about that," Miller said. "You try to

help each other out. Nobody will have a perfect night and have everything go their way. We've

just got to stick with it. There's still some big points out there to get."