I didn’t blog my recap of Tuesday night’s game since I was playing lacrosse and only caught the third period an overtime but it was a nice 3-2 OT win for the Sabres against the Flames to get in the win column. Tonight’s result wasn’t great though as they followed that up with a sloppy 4-3 loss at home to the Flames.

Jonathan Huberdeau opened the scoring only 48 seconds into the game. Devon Levi made the initial save on the shot from the blue line, but had no clue where the puck was on the rebound. Huberdeau threw the puck in the crease and as Levi slid over to find it, the puck went off the blade of his skate and into the back of the net to make it 1-0 Flames early. Stanley Cup winning veteran Erik Johnson tied it up 6:05 into the game with his first point as a Sabre with a clean, simple wrist shot from the point to make it a 1-1 game. With 9:45 remaining in the first period, the Flames took the lead again making it a 2-1 game with Walker Duehr getting a rebound and putting it past Levi on another play where he looked lost. Tage Thompson got his first goal of the season with 5:32 remaining in the first period with a nice power play goal off a beautiful pass from Dylan Cozens. Not our best period defensively but thanks to the offense getting it going, fun first 20 minutes to this game.

Fun second period that was pretty evenly matched and the Sabres played much better than they did in the first. Devon Levi made some nice saves, including a beautiful one on a breakaway for Calgary and we went into the second intermission still tied up a two goals a piece. 

Just 1:52 into the third period, after a turnover at the Flames blue line, Blake Coleman scored for the Flames to put them up 3-2 on a sloppy looking 3-on-2 that the Sabres defense gave up at the end of a long shift. Not how you want to start a period. It didn’t take long for the Sabres to tie it up and get that goal back, with JJ Peterka picking up his second goal of the season with a great shot over Dan Vladar in the middle of the ice, tying the game at 3 with 16:46 left in the third period. The Flames took their lead back even quicker though with Adam Ruzicka making it 4-3 Calgary only 1:20 later. That turned out to be the game winner as we went on to lose 4-3.

FINAL: Sabres 3, Flames 4

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The Flames outshot Buffalo 37-27 and they outplayed the Sabres by an expected goal rate of 3.86-2.39. We only generated 19 shots in 5-on-5 play and we didn’t generate enough offense tonight to get the win, giving up very untimely goals as we couldn’t build any momentum and played very sloppy all game. Calgary answered back to every one of our goals, which were all to tied up the game as we played from behind the entire game. We had chances and just couldn’t score or really get the offense going. Bad loss that showed some decent points.

Back in action on Saturday night at home against the Isles in the black and red. Like Tage Thompson said in the postgame, it’s very early in the season, lot of games left, and we’ll be fine. No need to lose our minds four games into the year.

Let’s Go Sabres.

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