COLUMBUS, Ohio — On back-to-back nights, the Buffalo Sabres have lost to the 15th-

place team in the Eastern Conference and the 14th-place team in the West.

That's all you need to know about the capper to the worst week of the Sabres' season.

And that's certainly why the doors to the locker room were closed for 23 minutes late

Saturday night before coach Lindy Ruff and his grim-faced assistants emerged from a team

meeting and headed to their office inside Nationwide Arena to ponder a major stinker some

more.

After Carolina snuck out of HSBC Arena with a 4-3 victory Friday, the Sabres had no

response 24 hours later. The lowly Columbus Blue Jackets blanked Buffalo, 4-0, before a

sellout crowd of 18,576 full of disappointed Sabres fans.

The Sabres officially stand in crisis with a four-game losing streak for the first time

this season.

Were it not for the Toronto Maple Leafs ending Ottawa's 11-game winning streak with

Saturday's 5-0 win over the Senators, the Sabres would be out of first place in the Northeast

Division for the first time in eons.

As it stands, Buffalo remains one point ahead. But the Sabres sure don't have the look of a

first-place team.

The meeting was clearly an attempt to remind themselves of what went on through the

season's first 47 games, when the Sabres went 30-11-6.

Since then, they're 2-7-1.

"The message is we're a better team than we're playing right now," Ruff said.

"There's a feeling in the room right now that we're going to stick together," said captain

Craig Rivet. "We're going through a tough time, haven't played the best hockey. We have a

pretty good team in this room and we're going to put this behind us and move forward."

The Sabres will return to the ice Monday in preparation for Tuesday's visit from Boston.

They have a lot to figure out.

They can start with the power play. It went 0 for 5 for the second straight night and is 0

for 14 the last three games.

"We'd been having success on it but lately it hasn't gotten us any momentum," said Jason

Pominville. "It's been the other way around. It's hurt us."

The Columbus power play, meanwhile, scored twice against the Buffalo penalty killers, who

had killed 23 of 24 disadvantages to ascend to the top of the NHL.

Goaltender Steve Mason, the reigning Calder Trophy winner who has been a struggling

sophomore, made 28 saves for his third shutout. The Blue Jackets have won back-to-back games

for the first time since October,both under interim coach Claude Noel.

Backup goaltender Patrick Lalime took the loss and was denied for the third straight time

in earning his 200th career victory. Lalime, playing his first game since Jan. 19, took his

place in blooper film infamy on the Jackets' first goal.

Defenseman Milan Jurcina scored it at 2:17 of the second period, firing a dump-in into the

corner from just a step inside the center red line. It careened around the glass and rocketed

toward the net as Lalime was following its path, facing inward toward the net.

Lalime tried to leap but he couldn't get his left foot out of the way, with the puck

ticking off it and dribbing into the net for a stunning goal.

"There's frustration with the lack of capitalizing on opportunities, the frustration with

tough breaks going in," Ruff said. "You look at the first goal and when things were going

good, we had breaks going our way. You just have to let it even out."

Rick Nash made it 2-0 with a power-play goal at 15:32 and the hosts scored twice in the

first three minutes of the third period as Anton Stralman and Raffi Torres made it a blowout.

Nationwide is the only current NHL arena in which the Sabres have never won. Buffalo has

three losses and a tie here since the Blue Jackets were born in 2000.