The Washington Capitals were in Buffalo for a second straight game, and skated off with a 2-1 win over the Sabres.

Vitek Vanecek made 30 saves in his NHL debut for the win.

“I think it was a good game; the dream came true. I’m so happy we won,” Vanecek said. “I was a little bit nervous [the first] couple of minutes. But when they shoot the three shots early, I [was] just feeling better and better. When they had their power plays, I was feeling good.”

Rasmus Ristolainen had the only goal for the Sabres.

“I think the disappointing thing for all of us would be the power plays we were able to get,” Buffalo coach Ralph Krueger said. “We had unbelievable discipline again today with no penalties taken, but all those power play opportunities, then the 6-on-5 at the end, coming out empty-handed is certainly the reason we lost this game. I thought the 5-on-5 game was outstanding. We’ll take that on any night. Our power play just didn’t get the job done today.”

Tom Wilson broke a 1-1 tie past the midway point of the third period for the eventual game-winner.

“I think we’ve changed a lot of things and there’s definitely been that buy-in,” Wilson said. “Yesterday was a great team effort. Tonight a little slow to start, but I think we got there in the third, and we’re just going to keep building on it because it’s a new system and just trust the guy next to you to go out there and get it done.”

Jakub Vrana opened the scoring in the middle frame with a goal to give the Caps a 1-0 lead.“Where we weren’t quite on point where we needed to be, I thought that Tom was on point from start to finish,” Caps head coach Peter Laviolette said. “The way he worked and the way he competed, the way he skated; his strides were meaningful, his battle level was high, his physicality was high. He had a huge goal to get us back on top in the third, but I really liked the way Tom played tonight.”

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Linus Ullmark made 19 saves in the loss.

“You’re going to have good games where you don’t win and maybe this was one of those for us tonight, but this game is about results,” Buffalo’s Jeff Skinner said. “This league is about results. We need to get back at it, keep working and try to get a win the next game.”