Coming off a big win in Seattle last night, tonight the Sabres didn’t play great, losing 3-2 on the road in Vancouver in the second half of a back to back.

The Canucks got on the board first, 4:11 into the game as Devon Levi couldn’t find the puck after he made the initial save and Conor Garland pushed it in off his pad and over the goal line to puck up 1-0. Don Granato challenged it for goaltender interference before the goal, but the goal was good, sending Vancouver to the power play with the lead. Buffalo wasn’t great in that first period, looking expectedly sluggish in the second half of a back to back after last night’s game.

The Sabres played better to start the second period than they did in the first, but the Canucks were the first to score in the period with a nice backhanded goal by Elias Petterson, cashing in on a rebound from a J.T. Miller shot, making it 2-0 with 6:12 left in the second. It was better than the first period, but still pretty lousy, especially offensively, as we really couldn’t generate anything.

Rasmus Dahlin broke Casey DeSmith’s shutout with 10:37 left in regulation, dangling through the Canucks’ defense as he put the Sabres on the board and made it a 2-1 game. With 1:51 to go, Petterson scored on the empty net, making it 3-1 Vancouver and essentially finishing off the game. It wasn’t quite over yet though, and with 20.7 seconds left, Dahlin got his second goal of the game with a ripped shot of the Canucks’ defenseman to make it 3-2 on a four on four.

FINAL: Sabres 2, Canucks 3

No video for most of the Sabres after dark games.

This game wasn’t great, pretty much as expected. Although the score didn’t really show it, I felt like we got dominated tonight. We didn’t generate a whole lot of anything offensively, getting outshot 34-17, out chanced 17-10, and absolutely crushed by an expected goal rate of 6.71-2. Making his first NHL start since January 24th, Devon Levi was actually pretty solid to keep the Sabres in the game, making 31 saves on the 33 shots he saw, with a .939 save percentage tonight. Rasmus Dahlin was also good offensively, scoring twice in a game for the first time in his career, but the rest of the offense got nothing going, and the defense wasn’t great either. Just an all around lousy game to be up till 1am watching.

Let’s see if we could bounce back in a very difficult game in Edmonton on Thursday night.

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