Coming off the most embarrassing loss of the season against the Devils on Saturday night, I didn’t really have any expectations whatsoever going into this game tonight against the Rangers, but the Sabres bounced back with a beautiful 5-1 shocking win in MSG.

With some luck on the Sabres side, the Rangers scored first but it wasn’t called a goal for a “hand pass”, which to me was a questionable start. A bit later in the period, after the Rangers failed to clear the puck out of the zone, JJ Peterka got the puck and put the Sabres on the board first, taking a 1-0 lead with 8:19 remaining in the first period. Buffalo played solid hockey for that first period. UPL was excellent in goal to keep the Rangers from scoring all period, making twelve big saves. Buffalo put a ton of pressure on New York and both team generated some solid chances. Fun first period, definitely better than I expected.

With 26.4 left in the second period, Alex Tuch jumped on the rebound in the middle of the ice to put the Sabres up 2-0. Another solid period on both ends of the ice.

In the third period, with 11:52 left in regulation, the Rags got on the board with a beautiful shot from Mika Zibanejad on the power play that beat UPL to make it a 2-1. The Sabres got the two goal lead back with Alex Tuch getting his second goal of the game with a shot through traffic with 4:31 left in the game. With a nice effort by Skinner to get the puck, Casey Mittelstaad finished the game with an empty netter. To make the score even nicer, the captain, Kyle Okposo fired in a low angle shot for his third goal in three games in the closing seconds of the game.

FINAL: Sabres 5, Rangers 1

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by A Town’s Zone (@atownszone)

Phenomenal bounce back win for the Sabres tonight. UPL was spectacular in goal and really impressed me and Buffalo played way better than expect on both ends of the ice, putting sustained pressure on the Rags all night. We outshot the Rangers 39-26, out-chanced them 14-10, and outplayed them by an expected goal rate of 3.55-2.76.

Despite how low energy Granato and the team were after the loss on Saturday, hopefully something with getting embarrassed by the Devils gave them a kick in the ass to come out so strong tonight and hopefully we see that success sustained these next few games.

Let’s Go Buffalo!

---

Please follow me:

Instagram: @atownszone

Twitter: @atownszone

If you like the site and my work, share it with your friends!

… and tell Dave Portnoy to hire me at Barstool…