In Pittsburgh, the Buffalo Sabres’ Dustin Tokarski made 45 saves in a 2-1 win over the Penguins on Tuesday night.
“I felt good. Just take it on as another game,” Tokarski said. “Focused in on what I can control. Be a presence back there. The guys battled hard and we got the win. … I’m enjoying it. We have a great group of guys. Good staff. Going to the rink every day is a lot of fun. I think when you have that kind of group, it just makes playing games, practices and being around the team a lot of fun.”
Jake Guentzel scored the Penguins only goal in the sixth minute of the third period.
“Obviously, we’d like to end up on the right side of the result,” Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan said. “Points are important. We’re well aware of that. I thought the team played really hard tonight. I thought we controlled a lot of the play. We didn’t get a whole lot of puck luck. We put a lot of pucks at the net. We had a lot of net traffic.
“I think we were trying to play the game that gives us the best chance to be successful. It just didn’t happen for us tonight.”
The Pens did not play with the desperation that Sidney Crosby had said the team needed early in the day.
The Penguins have dropped all three games that Crosby has iced this season.
The win pushed the Sabres to 7-6-3-2.
“I’m glad we had a two-goal lead and we had [Tokarski] in net. That’s what I think of the third period,” Sabres head coach Don Granato said. “It was [Tokarski’s] show from that point. Starting right away. … We were reeling all the way through but battled all the way through.”
Colin Miller and Kyle Okposo were the Sabres strikers.
“We just came out flat (in the third),” Okposo said. “We had a tough power play to start there, a couple tough power plays to start. It just killed any momentum we had built in the first two periods. Made them feel good. We just have to do a better job of being a little bit harder and being a little bit simpler.
“When we have a chance to probably close out a game at the start of the third there, we just have to come out better.”
Pittsburgh dropped to 5-6-4.
“Play our game,” Pittsburgh’s Jeff Carter said. “When we play like that, we’re very hard to play against. We’ve shown that a lot this year. At times, we haven’t. It’s pretty noticeable. So we had a lot of opportunities tonight. Their goalie played an outstanding game. We’ll take some positives, but we’ve got to start getting some points here.”
Tristan Jarry made 17 saves in the Pens loss.
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