Tonight with Florida sitting a bunch of guys to get read for the playoffs, the Sabres hung in the game, taking it to a shootout but still ultimately lose 3-2 in a shootout on the road to the Panthers.
Kind of a boring first period, that was pretty competitive despite not a whole lot of action. With 18.8 seconds left, the Sabres opened the scoring with a nice give and go capped off with a beautiful pass by Jason Zucker back to Dahlin, who made it 1-0 Buffalo on the power play.
Carter Verhaeghe tied up the game on a fantastic individual play, walking across the ice, waiting out UPL to go down and putting it backhand into the empty net to make it 1-1 five minutes into the second period, right on top of the crease. Pathetic goal for Buffalo to give up there. Florida took the lead with 5:13 left in the second period, as Jesse Puljujarvi had a one handed tip in of an Seth Jones shot from the blue line. Entertaining period of hockey with a lot of physicality.
Right as time was expiring in a 5 on 3, JJ Peterka tied the game up at 2-2 with 7:41 left in the third period, short side on a one timer from down at the red line after the Sabres generated a ton of chances on the power play and couldn’t score. They grinded out the rest of the period and it was onto overtime.
Both teams had plenty of chances in overtime and weren’t able to score, with this game going to one of the dumbest things in hockey, a practice drill to determine the winner of the game, going to a shootout.
Anton Lundell scored first for Florida in the shootout. Jack Quinn missed the net for Buffalo. Former Sabre Evan Rodrigues got the puck saved by UPL. Vanacek made the save on JJ Peterka. Save by UPL, getting a piece of the puck on Samoskevich. Alex Tuch needed to score to keep it going, ran out of room and had the puck saved by Vanacek and Florida wins it.
Final: Sabres 2, Panthers 3 (SO)
Not a great game for the Sabres, but they did grind it out to go to overtime against the Panthers team that sat a bunch of players tonight on their push for the playoffs, but ultimately lost, which is good for the future of this team.
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