In Buffalo, Victor Olofsson scored the first and last goals of the game for the Sabres on Saturday, his second came with 19 seconds left in extra time to give Buffalo a 6-5 win over the Minnesota Wild.
“I think their guy kind of lost an edge down there and it was a clear 3-on-2,” Olofsson said. “Great play by ‘Dahls’ [Rasmus Dahlin] first to ‘Krebsy,’ and then he made a beautiful pass to me.”
Dahlin, who had five points in the win, scored the game-tying goal, 5-5, with under three minutes left in the third period to force the extra session.
“My drive is coming from my teammates,” Dahlin said. “Everyone wants to score, everyone wants to be the game-winner. It’s easy to play and it’s easy to have that mentality when everyone else is having it, too.”
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 39 saves in the Sabres win.
Buffalo improved to 20-15-2.
“He (Dahlin) was a force,” Buffalo coach Don Granato said. “I don’t know, is it NHL vote, NHL All-Star dot com? Whatever it is. But there should be some clicks tonight because that was a special night by him. To watch that unfold was impressive.”
The Wild dropped to 22-13-3.
“We talked about it with you guys here this morning of how good they are offensively in the League, and they proved that,” Wild coach Dean Evason said. “I don’t know, maybe we wanted to prove how good we are, but that’s not who we are. We traded chances with them and in the end got burnt by it.”
The Wild’s Brandon Duhaime and Kirill Kaprizov scored in the middle frame to give them a 2-1 lead before the Sabres rallied back for a three goals.
Tage Thompson and Dahlin scored for a 3-2 lead to the Sabres.
Dylan Cozens pushed the advantage to 4-2.
The Wild replied with three goals of their ow to take the lead.
Ryan Hartman scored in the second period to get the Wild within one, 4-3.
Marcus Foligno scored less than a minute into the third period to knot the game, 4-4, and Joel Eriksson Ek scored for a 5-4 lead to the Wild.
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Marc-Andre Fleury made 31 saves in the Wild loss.
“That one’s not on [Fleury], he played great, and give credit to that team,” Foligno said. “They do swarm and come in a group of five a lot of the game. We battled hard, but I think the start for this game [was] a little bit sleepy on our end.
“I think we knew the offensive talent that they had and the way they play. I think we could’ve done a better job in the first to understand the style of play, but they definitely swarmed us and kept us on our heels, and it took us a while to get to our game. … All in all, you’ve got a lead with a couple of minutes, you’ve got to bear down and didn’t do it. Overtime was nuts, so it’s just one of those things you’d like it to not go to overtime.”
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