I had plans and despite watching the Sabres whole game in their awesome win against the Bruins on Thursday, I couldn’t blog it. They played fantastic on both ends of the ice and really shocked me. I made sure to be on my couch for tonight’s game though taking on the Habs. The Sabres played really well again tonight but problematically couldn’t score and we ended up losing 3-2 in a shootout at home to the Canadiens.

Really good first period for the Sabres despite it being a scoreless game. We played solid hockey on both ends of the ice, outshooting the Habs 17-7 and getting nice chances, but not beating Cayden Primeau.

After Eric Robinson got kicked out of the game on a game misconduct on a bit of a soft call, with 7:01 left in the second period with a couple seconds left of 4 on 4 hockey, Jayden Struble scored the first goal of the game, and the first of his career against his Northeastern teammate Devon Levi, to give the Habs a 1-0 lead. Just 14 seconds later on the power play, right off the faceoff, Nick Suzuki scored again to quickly make it 2-0, beating Levi blocker side. Not a great period for the Sabres, kind of taking the wind out of this game with the two goals in  14 seconds.

1:06 into the third period, Jeff Skinner got the Sabres on the board with a quick shot right in front. With 13:24 left in regulation, Kyle Okposo picked up the 600th point of his career with a gaol to tie up the game, following up a rebound and beating Primeau. Good period for Buffalo to tie it up and force overtime.

A really entertaining overtime period, but neither team could score, despite a bunch of good chances for the Sabres, so this game needed a shootout to determine a winner.

Tage Thompson started the shootout, getting stopped by Primeau. Levi kept it scoreless with a poke check on Nick Suzuki. Viktor Olofsson scored the first goal of the shootout but Cole Caufield tied it up, beating Levi five hole. Owen Power very slowly creeped up, waited out Primeau and beat him. Ylonen kept them game going, with a nice goal to beat Levi glove side. JJ Peterka couldn’t beat Primeau and the Habs got the win on Slafkovsky’s goal.

FINAL: Sabres 2, Canadiens 3 (SO)

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Really good game, but disappointing loss tonight. We outshot the Habs 48-31 and outplayed them significantly, by an expected goal rate of 4.61-2.43, and yet just couldn’t score. We went 0-6 on the power play, which is a pretty big concern. I liked the pressure and the volume of shots we put on Montreal, but it’s still problematic that this team can’t find the back of the net. Levi was phenomenal in goal to keep this one close. Annoying loss.

The Yotes come to town on Monday. Let’s Go Buffalo.

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