The good vibes continue for Kevyn Adams's young Sabres as a result of their 4-3 shootout win against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Buffalo on Wednesday.
Tage Thompson scored a Thomas Vanek hat trick (two goals in regulation and one in the shootout), Craig Anderson stopped 24 shots, and the Sabres have now strung together three victories a row for the first time since October.
There wasn’t much for fans to chew on in the early going as the Sabres held the puck tentatively in their own zone and patiently waited for the Penguins to give them a look they liked before attempting a zone exit. It looked like Don Granato wasn’t interested in getting into a track meet with the Penguins, which, frankly is somewhat flummoxing. The Sabres have young legs and can – at their best – keep up offensively with almost anyone in the league.
Buffalo tends to give established teams too much credit in favor of playing a passive game with the hope of not getting burned, and they started the game that way. No disrespect to future Hall of Famers Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin, but these guys are hardly spring chickens at this point of their careers and guys like Dylan Cozens and Peyton Krebs have young, fresh legs. Granato would eventually get the message across to his players to play a more decisive game and the Sabres would play a harder north/south game instead of a tentative one as the contest moved along.
The Sabres had some of their best looks of the first period in the waning seconds of their first powerplay as Rasmus Dahlin flashed some fancy moves and created some grade-a scoring chances for himself. Dahlin’s confidence is growing on a game-by-game basis which Sabres fans must love to see. That powerplay didn’t result in a goal, and even though the Sabres drew another powerplay almost immediately after, they weren’t able to build on the first and create any chances.
Tage Thompson would open the scoring on a nifty back-and-forth scoring play on a stretch pass from Mattias Samuelsson who then followed the play behind the Penguins net and fed the puck back to Thompson who roofed it over the glove of Penguins goaltender Casey DeSmith for his 26th of the year.
Crosby would even things up early in the second period with a bit of a weak shot that beat Craig Anderson through the wickets. Crosby entered the game against the Sabre with 75 points in 52 career games against the blue and gold. Yeah, he’s been good against Buffalo.
Speaking of good jobs, TNT did a great job of talking way too much about Casey DeSmith’s love for disk golf. I think Darren Pang talked about DeSmith’s frolfing abilities for 25 minutes. To be fair, DeSmith did show some excellent coordination with a neck save on Kyle Okposo mere moments after the prolonged disc-ussion (get it) about the goalie’s hobby.
The top line of Skinner-Thompson-Tuch line was easily the best of the second period for the Sabres and routinely gave the Penguins absolute fits due to their shoot-first mentality and relentless play. Other than that line, though, the rest of the team didn’t have much going for them offensively. That is, until the old guys got going. Girgensons and Okposo played their classic brand of down-low, keep-it-in, hard on the walls hockey and Kyle Okposo eventually found Girgensons in front of the net and the Latvian Locomotive scored his first goal since January 6th. Nothing fancy there, just good board work.
Malkin would tie things up on a shot from below the goal line that went off Anderson’s stick and then off Henri Jokiharju’s leg and back under Anderson. It was a rough game for Anderson to that point between that fluky goal and the softy in the first.
Kevyn Adams joined the TNT broadcast to start the third period and he had to be thrilled to be in the booth as Thompson scored his second of the game and his 27th of the season on a great hustle play and pass from Alex Tuch on the power play. That line had dominated the game all night long and it was no surprise that they got back on the board with the Sabres’ third goal of the night.
The Penguins would tie it at 3 apiece with on the powerplay following a faceoff loss by Cody Eakin in the defensive zone. When you’re on a team for one purpose, and one purpose only, it’s important to do that job incredibly well. Eakin did not do that job incredibly well and Kris Letang would make the Sabres pay late in the third.
The tied score would not be resolved in regulation and the two teams would need extra time to get it done. Overtime couldn’t break the deadlock despite some spectacular plays by the Penguins who were stumped by Anderson at every turn. The shootout would start with Tage Thompson who scored on a classic forehand-backhand-forehand move that beat DeSmith, and Alex Tuch sealed the deal with the Sabres second goal compared to none for the Penguins.
Buffalo is next in action on Friday night against the Washington Capitals.