Tonight the Sabres got their second win in a row, grinding out a decent 2-1 win on the road in Columbus. Coming off a fun 3-2 win against the Habs on Wednesday, I wasn’t overly confident going into tonight’s game after the first two games we had against the Blue Jackets this year, getting blown out 9-4 in the most embarrassing loss of the season at home and then answering back with a 3-2 overtime win.
The Sabres did nothing defensively in front of the net and the let the Jackets score on the power play relatively easily 12:05 into the game and go up 1-0. The Sabres tied the game up with 3:44 left in the first, on a nice offensive run in transition that ended with Zemgus Girgensons beating Tarasov to knot the game up at 1-1.
The second period ended scoreless, with some good chances for both teams and a lucky break for the Sabres off the crossbar that was millimeters away from giving Columbus the lead back.
After a few nice offensive chances on a rush, the Sabres scored first in the third, with Connor Clifton getting his first goal as a Sabre with 16:33 left in the third period on a really nice long range shot to give us the first lead of the game. We held on and got our second win in a row and second against Columbus in a row.
FINAL: Sabres 2, Blue Jackets 1
Solid win tonight for the Sabres. It wasn’t all that pretty of a start but it was a good win, grinding it out for our second win in a row on the dads trip. We outshot the Jackets 38-27 but were outplayed by an expected goal rate of 3.23-1.94. It didn’t matter though, with UPL playing great in goal to give us the win. I’ll take it.
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