Sabres rally for 3-2 win over Wild

In St Paul, the Buffalo Sabres’ Mark Pysyk struck for the game0tying goal on Thursday night in the third period to send their match with the Wild to extra time, which solved nothing.

Tage Thompson completed the comeback with the only goal in the skills portion of the evening’s affairs.

“It’s huge,” Pysyk said. “[The Wild] always play very hard here, it’s a tough building to come into. But the guys did a great job. We have some confidence that room, which is good. We’ve just got to keep building on it.”

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 30 saves in the Buffalo win.

The Sabres improved to 10-15-4.

Jon Merrill and Kirill Kaprizov were the Wild strikers, Minnesota led, 1-0 and 2-1, in the game.

The Wild have dropped three straight games.

“It’s a wake-up call for us,” Merrill said. “When you’re winning, everything feels good and you don’t really have to sit back and address the mistakes as much, you kind of just ride the wave. But definitely right now, we’ve got to dig in and we’ve got to get ourselves out of this.”

The Wild dropped to 19-8-2.

“We probably deserved (a) worse (outcome), right?” Wild head coach coach Dean Evason said. “We weren’t good. We weren’t good right from the start. We weren’t good in the middle. We weren’t good at the end. All of us. We weren’t very good.

” … Our pace was just terrible. Terrible. [The Sabres] had pace. They played hard. Credit to them for sure. But we didn’t have anything tonight.”

Dylan Cozens also scored for the Sabres.

“It’s a very winnable game because of the work they put in and they deserved to win,” Buffalo head coach Don Granato said. ” The game we felt was ours. There was an opportunity that we would have to win that game. … They were dialed in, and they went after it.”

Cam Talbot made 38 saves in the Minnesota loss.

“It’s hard to pinpoint one thing in that game,” Talbot said. “We came out pretty flat obviously in the first period and it didn’t really get a whole lot better from there. We were trying to make a push in the second period there, I turn the puck over, they get one and it’s a 1-1 game.

“I just feel like I left too many secondary opportunities out there for them tonight. In a game that we weren’t creating a ton ourselves, I’ve got to settle things down in our zone. Obviously, that one giveaway cost us tonight.”