In Buffalo, the Toronto Maple Leafs were looking to keep the good times rolling.
Instead, Jack Eichel had two goals and and three points in a 6-4 win for the Sabres on Friday night.
“It’s always fun to win on home ice, and we hadn’t beat them in a while, so it’s good to get the two points, and I think we needed it as a group as well,” Eichel said. “Good contributions up and down the lineup starting with our goaltender, who I thought played tremendous.”
Linus Ullmark made 25 saves for the win.
John Tavares struck twice and Dmytro Timashov and Kasperi Kapanen had single markers for the Leafs.
“You got to give some credit to them,” Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said. “They did do a nice job. … We knew the neutral zone was going to be hard to get through today, but just how they set up their structure, in all the games we’ve watched previous to this, other teams have a hard time getting through there, so we thought that’d be a problem for us, but I thought we were in good spots, then just kind of forced one more pass, instead of putting the puck into a better place where we could have gotten after it.”
Jimmy Vesey, Jeff Skinner, Casey Mittelstadt, and Victor Olofsson struck for singles in the win.
“You play a lot of games, all you can do is show up the next day,” Vesey said. “I think my mindset has been a lot better this year. It’s been positive. The first couple years, I think I beat myself up, but (I) stuck with the process and it’s paying off.”
[WATCH:Â All Maple Leafs vs. Sabres highlights]
Michael Hutchinson made 30 saves in the loss.
“We came out in the first period and play well, played really well, and the third period,” Hutchinson said. “I think it shows a lot about our team that were able to make adjustments after the second period and come out and generate a lot of offense in the third period. We came close a bunch of times, one shift late in the third period there where it just felt like the puck is going to go in, but their goalie made some big saves, and it ended up being the difference.”
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