In Buffalo, Ryan O’Reilly scored the first two goals of the game on Tuesday for the Maple Leafs, then added an empty-net goal for a hat trick with his new team in a 6-3 win over the Buffalo Sabres.
“Yeah, definitely feels a little better than other buildings, for sure,” said O’Reilly,, in the deal that sent forward Tage Thompson to the Sabres. “Just to get on the board like that, to contribute tonight, get the first one out of the way … it’s a good feeling right now. Throughout the game, obviously it would’ve been nice to just shut the door and not let them get back into it. But you know, a win’s a win.”
John Tavares and Michael Bunting also scored in the opening period for a 4-0 lead for Toronto after 20 minutes of play.
Ilya Samsonov made 29 saves in the Toronto win.
Mitchell Marner had five assists for the Maple Leafs.
“Overall, I thought we did a good job of really not giving up a whole lot through the game,” Marner said. “When we did, ‘Sammy’ made some unreal saves for us as usual.”
The Maple Leafs improved to 35-15-8.
“When you have a period like we did and you grab control of the game on the road like we did, you’re not going to get too critical of the rest of the game from there,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said. “That said, while there’s a great sample of what it is supposed to look like and what we are capable of, there’s still plenty in there in the second half of the game that shows why we need to stay on our habits, our details all the way through regardless of score or opponent.”
William Nylander scored in the middle frame to send the game to the third with the Leafs up, 5-0.
Buffalo dropped to 28-23-4.
The Sabres rallied the third period with three straight goals to trim the deficit to just two goals, 5-3.
Buffalo is 2-4-1 in their last seven matches.
Buffalo’s Jack Quinn got the rally started with a a goal at 5:12 for a 5-1 count.
Alex Tuch made it 5-2 at 8:01 of the third, and Jeff Skinner scored to trim the lead to 5-3.
“They were simple, they were hard, they were moving their feet,” Tuch said. “We got a little bit too lazy and we just weren’t playing our game at all. Like you said, horrendous start. Back on our heels, just mistakes, and that’s a team that’s, I mean, that’s an offensive super team. They’ve got a lot of star power over there. You’re going to make defensive mistakes, you’re going to allow time and space, they’re going to capitalize on it and they did so.”
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen got the start for the Sabres and yielded four goals and made just six saves before getting the hook.
“This was not on ‘UPL’ just so we’re clear on that,” Buffalo coach Don Granato said. “That change was made because we didn’t have the start. They had jump at the start and we didn’t. It was one of those nights where you could see we weren’t processing things well. I thought that was the case through the entire game. We didn’t look sharp. We didn’t feel sharp. We had to battle within ourselves and we challenged them quite a bit on the coaching side.”
Craig Anderson made 17 saves in a mop up role.
“I thought we still can take a little bit away from the third period, but we dug ourselves too big of a hole,” Tuch said. “So, we have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what we did wrong at the start of the game.”
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