In Buffalo, the visiting Florida Panthers clinched a playoff berth on Sunday with a 5-2 win over the Sabres.
“They should be proud of themselves,” Florida coach Andrew Brunette said. “I think that’s the No. 1 goal heading into the season, and we have one of them. Lots of hockey left, but let’s enjoy the moment. It’s been an interesting 70 games, and they deserve every ounce of credit they are getting.”
Florida is the first team to pinch its ticket.
Jonathan Huberdeau had a goal to set a franchise mark with 97 points.
“He’s a tremendous, tremendous player and he deserves it the way he’s been playing,” Aleksander Barkov said of Huberdeau. “It couldn’t happen to a better guy. We still have a lot of games left, so it’s going to be a lot of fun to see where he’s going to end up. I’m just lucky to be his teammate and to play with him and see him do his thing.”
Spencer Knight made 26 saves in the Panthers win.
Jeff Skinner and Kyle Okposo scored for the Sabres.
“I thought we had a good first and then the second, they’ve got a real skilled team, the margin for error is really, really small,” Skinner said. “Pretty much zero. Just a couple miscues. Obviously, ‘Ticker,’ I think he played really well for us, he made some big saves. But yeah, one or two mistakes against them, they make you pay. That’s the type of team they have. That’s kind of what happened there in the second. Then our response in the third was pretty good, but obviously it’s just not enough.”
Florida improved 48-15-6.
Anthony Duclair hit for a double for Florida.
“I think we have enough talent in the room to score goals and everyone’s working hard, not just expecting that we’re going to score goals,” Barkov said. “The talent is there, but if you’re not working, nothing’s going to happen. I think everyone has the talent and has the work ethic to score those goals. Yeah, we’ve been scoring a lot, but at the same time, we need to be a little better in the defensive zone as well.”
Buffalo dropped to 25-34-11.
“I liked our response in the third,” Okposo said. “It was an emotional game Friday (a 4-3 win against the Nashville Predators). A very emotional game. The last time we had one of those we went out to Edmonton and laid an egg (a 6-1 loss March 17). I thought tonight we did a good job of coming out and being ready to play. With a young team, that’s not an easy thing to do, but for the most part I was happy. Obviously, in the second period, we just backed off. We just stopped skating, stopped going after them. Other than that, I thought we did OK.”
Anton Lundell and MacKenzie Weegar also scored for the Panthers.
Dustin Tokarski made 35 saves in the Sabres loss.
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