BUFFALO — To cite an old movie title: Suppose they gave a war and nobody came? That’s unanswerable.

But suppose that two weeks before the trading deadline, the NHL staged a game between two teams that either definitely will be, or possibly will be, “sellers” in the upcoming days?

A whole bunch of NHL scouts will show, and not because they like the wings at the Anchor Bar or Gabriel’s Gate.

A total of 24 scouts representing 17 NHL teams were assigned seats in the press box for the Buffalo Sabres‘ 2-0 win over the Avalanche on Thursday at the KeyBank Center. Sam Reinhart and Evander Kane scored for the Sabres, and Buffalo goalie Robin Lehner had 23 saves as the Avalanche suffered its ninth shutout, despite Avalanche coach Jared Bednar shaking up his recent lines to try to get something going. Calvin Pickard had 30 saves in the Avalanche net and Colorado’s latest losing streak reached five.

The Avalanche will close out the five-game trip Friday night at Raleigh against the Carolina Hurricanes.

For much of the second and all the third period against the Sabres, Matt Duchene centered Blake Comeau and Mikko Rantanen. Down 1-0, the Avalanche was pressing for the tying goal, but Kane’s score with 4:14 remaining put it away. The Avs at least awoke and had 12 shots on Lehner in the third. It didn’t help that Colorado didn’t have a power play all night.

BOX SCORE: Buffalo 2, Colorado 0

“I thought our line was dangerous, especially in the third we were in their end the whole time, but just couldn’t find that one to tie it up,” Duchene said. “Same story. We do some good things. We had a terrible first. We did not deserve to win that game, but we threw the kitchen sink at them in the third period and those are the ones you try and steal. You don’t deserve it, but you try and steal it with a couple of goals. We weren’t able to do it.”

Bednar said the Avalanche played well at the outset before Andreas Martinsen (holding) and Gabe Landeskog (tripping) took penalties in the first six minutes. The Sabres, with the league’s second-best power play going into the night, didn’t score with the man advantage either time there, but it arrested the Avalanche momentum and the Sabres broke through on the power play with Reinhart’s early second-period goal after Cody Goloubef’s holding minor with six seconds left in the first.

“But then they put us on our heels, and it looked like we weren’t ready to skate again, a little like the New Jersey game (Tuesday),” Bednar said. “So the lines were a little bit stale and I liked the way a couple of those guys were working, so I moved some things around there. We got a little spark at times, a little bit of a push there in the third period and started to play a little better. I thought the Duchene line, when we moved things around a little bit, they had some chances…We didn’t create enough scoring chances to win the hockey game at the end of the day. We didn’t earn a power play. . .

“My frustration comes game by game when we don’t play the way we’re capable of playing. Sometimes you get shut out and you create chances, but can’t score. Other nights, like tonight, we didn’t create enough chances to score enough goals to win the game.”

Teams with multiple scouts at the game were Winnipeg, Montreal, Columbus, Los Angeles and Toronto. The throng included Kings general manager Dean Lombardi.

The clock is ticking.

COLORADO AT CAROLINA, Friday, 5:30 p.m., ALT, 950 AM

Spotlight on: Hurricanes D Jaccob Slavin

The ‘Canes have a handful of young defensemen already on the roster or in the pipeline, and to varying degrees, they’re the sort the Avalanche is seeking and coveting. Slavin, Carolina’s fourth-round choice in 2012, is the top name on the list and especially intriguing because he’s from Erie and played two seasons at Colorado College. The Hurricanes, though, will be extremely reluctant, and perhaps even completely unwilling, to include him in any deal.