Coming off of our disappointing loss to the Habs last night, I was really happy to see how well the Sabres played for the bulk of tonight’s 6-4 win over the Senators on the road against Ottawa.

The Sabres came out of the gates a little bit slow tonight, but UPL making his first start of the season made some nice saves to keep the game scoreless. After they got their footing, Buffalo got on the board first, as Jeff Skinner capitalized on a two on one rush in transition Tuch and Mittelstadt off a turnover to make it 1-0 Sabres 8:06 into the game. Not long later, Zemgus Girgensons redirected a long range shot from Connor Clifton, finding the back of the net to give Buffalo a 2-0 lead with 8:40 left in the first period.

Somehow in the midst of chaos in front of the net, the Sabres did a great job holding the zone, the puck came off a rebound out front and just 4:02 into the second period, Jeff Skinner tapped the puck off the back of Forsberg pad and into the net to give the Sabres a nice 3-0 lead. With 6:46 to go in the second the Sens got on the board with Jakob Chychrun snapping the puck past UPL, who did slide over but wasn’t quick enough after making the initial save, making the score 3-1. On the power play with 3:10 left, Alex Tuch finally got his first goal of the season, tapping in a Dahlin shot to make the score 4-1 Sabres to give Buffalo the three goal lead back with 2:52 left in the second. Just a bit later Owen Power ripped a shot from the point, tipped in by Tage Thompson to make it 5-1 and put this game pretty much out of reach. Huge period for Buffalo and the best 20 minutes of hockey our offense has played all season. 

With 4:25 left in the game, the over hit with a goal from Vladdy Tarasenko (forgot he went to Ottawa) on some tic-tac-toe passing right off the face-off as he made it 5-2. The Sens added another goal in with 1:22 left in the game with Josh Norris beating UPL up front to make it a 5-3 game a bit too late for it to matter. Just 20 seconds later, the Senators made us sweat this one out though as Mathieu Joseph got the puck right in front to make it a 5-4 game. Not great. Tage dumped one into the empty net with 22.5 seconds left in the game to ice it off and avoid a crisis to end this one. Lousy third period as we completely let off the gas but luckily we got the win.

FINAL: Sabres 6, Senators 4

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Really solid win. I’ve liked how we’ve played lately and offensively this was our best game. I hated the way that we let the Sens back into the game though in the third period. But good win regardless. We were outshot 38-24 and outplayed by an expected goal rate of 3.67-2.78, but Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen bailed out the poor defensive play at times and our offense got us the win with the big third period.

Back in action again on Friday against the Devils.

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