In Buffalo, Saturday afternoon, the Sabres’ season drifted into another headwind with the visiting Vancouver. Canucks.
Vancouver struck for four goals in the third period and dulled the Sabres, 6-3.
Jacob Markstrom made 25 saves in the win.
Brock Boeser had two strikes in the win.
“It was huge for our group, especially on a road trip,” Boeser said. “You don’t want to start the road (trip) off with three straight losses (9-2 to Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday, 5-2 to Florida Panthers on Thursday). We did a really good job of (playing) more of our style of game tonight. We were more direct, more simple with the puck, we shut it down defensively, and I think that’s a key for our group.”
Brandon Montour, Sam Reinhart and Zemgus Girgensons sacored for Vuffalo.
J.T. Miller and Bo Horvat added single markers for the Canucks.
“This is one you look hard at, the video and interact with the team quite aggressively on it in the morning tomorrow, but it feels certainly like there’s a will here to play a certain game and wanting to play with the puck, as you saw some really exciting offensive cycles and offensive play and the [defensemen] are involved,” Sabres head coach Ralph Krueger said. “We’re just not getting enough out of that offensive pressure. Maybe back in our own end when it was 3-3 we tried to play a little bit like Vancouver does, which, again, isn’t our game. We need to understand that and learn from that here today.”
Most of the damage was done by Vancouver in under seven minutes.
“That’s definitely something we can’t accept. It was a [heck] of a hockey game until 14 minutes to go, and we turned it into a very painful, unacceptable finish,” Krueger said.
Jake Virtanen and oui Eriksson closed out the scoring with the fifth and sixth Vancouver goals.
“The last two games obviously we were terrible in both games, second half of Tampa [Bay], Florida whole game we [stunk]. It was only two games but it felt like 10 (days) to two weeks that we’d been losing,” the Canucks’ Christopher Tanev said. “When you lose like that, it doesn’t go over well and it’s huge that we got the win today because it topples the snowball effect. We get the win today and now we go to [play the Minnesota Wild on Sunday] with a little energy and a little pep in our step.”
[WATCH: All Canucks vs. Sabres highlights]
Carter Hutton made 29 saves in a rare start.
“I felt fine. It’s just frustrating, you know what I mean?” Hutton said. “[They’re] a pretty good hockey team up front. I think sometimes it’s like when they get to buzz like that in the offensive zone and move pucks around, stuff like that, it’s hard to compete. We battled, but obviously it’s just not good enough.”
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