Coming off a very emotional night for Ryan Miller night in Buffalo on Thursday night with #30 going up to the rafters, capped off by a 3-2 win in overtime against the Isles, the Sabres were back in action for an early matinee today at home against the Ducks and won 6-3 in a fun, entertaining game. Miller was in attendence again and dropped the puck with his son for a ceremonial faceoff between the two goalies of his former teams.
Dylan Cozens, who scored the game winner in overtime on Thursday, dangled with a beauty of a move and put the puck bar down for the first goal of the game, putting the Sabres up 1-0, 9:53 into the first period. Buffalo got on the board again with a quick zone entry and Jeff Skinner scoring on the power play, to go up 2-0 with 2:34 left in the period. Solid first period for the Sabres.
After Rasmus Samuelsson cranked a shot off the pipe, in transition the opposite way, Trevor Zegras put the Ducks back into the game with their first goal of the game, 4:47 into the second period, making it 2-1. Zegras tied it up scoring back to back after some very sloppy defensive play for the Sabres with 11:47 left in the second period. Buffalo answered right back though with even more sloppiness for the Ducks on the other end of the ice as John Gibson got caught out of the net. Dahlin held the puck having patience for the perfect passs to Peyton Krebs who gave the Sabres a 3-2 lead with 9:11 left in the second. With 4:31 left in the second, Simon Benoit fired a shot from deep that was pretty screened, Luukkonen didn’t even see it and that tied the game up at 3-3. Not the best defensive period for the Sabres as we looked sloppy and not paying a whole lot of attention to let the Ducks tie this game twice.
To start the third, Ilya Lyubushkin went motoring down the ice in transition, passed it over to Victor Olofsson who fired the one timer passed Gibson to give the Sabres a 4-3 lead just 2:12 into the period, extending his goal streak to three straight games. With 11:53 left in regulation, the Sabres got a two goal lead back, as Victor GOALofsson snagged the puck away from Anaheim, went streaking up the ice and put the Sabres up 5-3 with his second goal in a row. Peyton Krebs got his second goal of the game too with 6:20 left and slinged the puck over Gibson’s glove hand to make it 6-3. Krebs has really come into his own the last ten games or so, which is great to see.
We win!
Final: Sabres 6, Ducks 3
Great game for the Sabres with the red and black goatheads again, hitting six goals again, which they’ve done for all but one of their games in these sweaters. The offense came alive as they should’ve tonight, with every line contributing to the scoring efforts and other than that stretch for the second half of the second period, we played pretty good defensively as well. We slightly outshot the Ducks 39-36 and slightly outplayed them by an expected goal rate of 2.75-2.17. Back in action for a tough matchup in Dallas on Monday night.
Let’s Go Sabres!
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