In Buffalo, the Sabres lost in regulation for then first time in six games as the New Jersey Devils won, 6-3.
Yegor Sharangovich had a goal for the New Jersey Devils
Pavel Zacha struck for two power-play goals in the win for New Jersey.
“We’re a young team and we have to find a way to win these games, and we finally did,” Zacha said. “Third period’s very important, especially with a tied game and I think we worked hard, played the same way. We didn’t change anything in the system. We just kept working and we scored those goals and won the game.”
It was the Devils’ first game without Travis Zajac and Kyle Palmieri.
“It’s never easy to see guys traded, especially guys like Trav and ‘Palms’,” Zacha said. “They’ve been here with me since I started (drafted in 2015) so you never want to see guys like that go. But we knew what team we had here today and we had to work hard and go win a game.”
Aaron Dell made 24 saves to get the win, his first of the season.
The Buffalo strikers were Victor Olofsson, Tage Thompson and Jeff Skinner.
“The third period, the winning goal, we had the puck on our stick,” Sabres head coach Don Granato said. “We, on the draw, had the puck on our stick multiple times and didn’t exit the zone. It ended up in our net. So they were hungrier than we were tonight. That’s a tough game when your opponent’s hungrier than you, and that was the case.”
Jesper Boqvist snapped a 3-3 tie in the third period to propel the Devils to the win.
Jack Hughes and Yegor Sharangovich also scored for New Jersey.
“Really liked our third period where we generated some good opportunities,” Devils head coach Lindy Ruff said. “We didn’t give up a lot. We only gave up a couple of shots. We played the game the right way, put pucks in deep. We got rewarded. The Boqvist goal was get the puck to the net, it went off the goaltender’s pad, and came right back out and Bo put it in the back of the net.”
Janne Kuokkanen added a late empty-net goal for the final
Linus Ullmark made 32 saves in the loss.
“I think that that’s just a sign of us having some more confidence that we’ve generated over the past week and a half or so,” the Sabres’ Kyle Okposo said. “Just making little, subtle plays, ‘Tommer’ gets a big one on the power play there. ‘Skinny’ gets one in front to tie the game. But you got to try to use that, 3-3 game, you don’t have a good 40 minutes and you’ve got a chance to win a game, we just got to come out and have a better third, and we just didn’t have it tonight.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.