Two goals in first more than enough in Tampa win

In Buffalo, the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning took a 2-0 lead in the opening stanza on Saturday afternoon and downed the Sabres, 3-1.

Jonas Johansson made 26 saves  in the win.

“I thought we defended great today,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “We didn’t really give up too much for the first two periods. Third period, they had the puck more than we did, but I never completely felt in duress. ‘JJ’ looked calm in net when they were on top of him. … In the end you have to keep the puck out of your net. If you’re going to give up one goal in the game, you’re going to have a good chance of winning the game. And that’s what we did tonight.”

The Lighting moved to 24-17-5.

The two first period goals came 52 seconds  apart with Nicholas Paul and Tyler Motte  getting the markers.

“When we’re consistent in our game, we obviously have a lot of trust and belief in ourselves but (if) we consistently do it for as close to 60 minutes as we can, I think we like our chances most nights,” Motte said. “I think throughout maybe the first half of the year, we weren’t as consistent period in, period out as we’d like to be, so I think that’s a good focus of ours.”

Buffalo dropped to 20-22-4.

“I thought we were just sloppy with the puck,” Buffalo’s Tage Thompson said. “I think we forced a lot of things through the neutral zone and kind of into their pressure, kind of making the game a little more difficult on ourselves and obviously that’s kind of how they got the first two goals, just kind of freebies for them.

“The game plan going in there was just to make them work and make them defend and I think we let them off a little easy tonight, gave them kind of an easy game.”

Dylan Cozens scored at 13:52 of  the middle frame to trim the deficit to 2-1.

“We knew we just had to get it behind them and work,” Cozens said. “Make them turn it over and spread the zone and just get pucks to the net and try to have guys around the net. We didn’t do a good enough job at that.”

Tampa sealed the win with an empty-net gal from Calvin de Haan at 18:44 of the third.

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 13 saves in the loss.