In Elmont, Kyle Okposo scored late in the third period end a scoreless tie with the New York Islanders and Help send the Buffalo Sabres to a 2-0 win.
“If you start thinking about where you’re at in the standings and playing, you’re not going to play well,” Okposo said. “There’s going to be too much anxiety. You’re not going to make the plays that you normally do. You have to stay in the moment and trust that the process will take care of itself. Because if you do all the right things, [more] likely than not, you’re going to end up with the right result [on] the scoreboard. And I think that’s a very important lesson that we’re trying to learn right now.”
Eric Comrie made 26 saves in the shutout win.
“It was a very mature game I thought from us,” Okposo said. “We haven’t always done that this year. You know we’re the youngest team in the League. …We played the game that needed to be played today. We didn’t get frustrated. We just continued to play our game. We didn’t get sucked into trying to make too many plays or taking things that weren’t there. That’s obviously a very frustrating team to play against. They know how to win, they know how to lock it down, and we just did a pretty good job staying patient a lot today.”
Buffalo improved to 35-31-6, and moved to within four points of the Pittsburgh Penguins for the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference.
“The work ethic [Okposo] puts in here, [we’re] pretty excited every time he scores,” Buffalo coach Don Granato said. “A great play by [Lyubushkin], who does a lot of grunt work. A lot of not limelight type work. So the two of them team up on that play, it was nice to see.”
Jeff Skinner added a late empty-net goal for the 2-0 final.
“It’s hard,” New York defenseman Scott Mayfield said. “There’s going to be games like that, and [we’ve] just got to regroup and get the next one.”
New York dropped to 37-28-9.
Semyon Varlamov made 33 saves in the Isles loss.
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