Sabres rally with five unanswered goals, down New Jersey, 5-2 Thompson scores four in Sabres win, including natural hat trick

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In Buffalo, the Sabres found themselves trailing 2-0 after the first 20 minutes of their match with the visiting New Jersey Devils on Friday night.

Tage Thompson hit for a natural hat trick over the second and third periods to erase the deficit and help send the Sabres to a 5-2 win over New Jersey.

“I think if you look at the season as a whole, there’s a lot of games or situations where things didn’t seem to go our way as a group or individuals,” Thompson said. “And, obviously, last [game] (a 6-2 loss to the Ottawa Senators on Wednesday) didn’t go the way we wanted and wasn’t a good enough effort especially at the time of the year we’re at right now.

“I thought, kind of get off to a similar start down two, it would have been easy to kind of just fold the tent and pack in and I thought we responded the right way. I think that says a lot about the character in the room and the guys we’ve got here. So, it was nice to get that one. It feels really good.”

Thompson added an empty-net strike with six seconds left on the game clock for his fourth goal of the game.

Devon Levi recovered from a rough first period to get the win, he made 28 saves.

“I knew there was still a lot of hockey to be played,” Levi said. “It’s easy to feel like it’s the end of the world, you let in two quick ones, but it’s when the mental toughness comes in. That’s when you rely on your teammates and you kind of come together as a group and just chip away at it and try to get back into the game. I had no doubt in the boys.”

The Sabres moved to 35-34-5.

New Jersey scored twice in the opening stanza for the 2-0 lead.

Max Willman scored with three minutes gone in the game for the early 1-0 advantage. He was credited with the goal after deflecting a point shot past Levi for the lead.

Jesper Bratt  pushed the lead to 2-0 midway through the first, he scoring off picking up a loose puck and wristing it home from the left circle.

“When you go up 2-0, obviously you know that they’re going to have a push and they did,” Bratt said. “We had some breakdowns in our game and some small mistakes that they capitalized on. Not great right now.”

New Jersey dropped to 36-34-4 after winning their previous two games.

“I think it’s a good time that we have a few days off right now, especially after you lose a game like that to regroup, refocus,” New Jersey interim coach Travis Green said. “And then, really, all we can do is worry about the next game.”

The loss severely damaged their hopes for a post season berth, they are five points back of the Washington Capitals, and six points back of the Philadelphia Flyers for third place in the Metropolitan Division p[layoff race.

Thompson started his hat trick run with 28 seconds gone in the middle frame. It was the end of the game of New Jersey.

“We know that was a game we should have taken advantage [of],” New Jersey’s  Nico Hischier said. “I don’t think there are any excuses. I think if you look at the game, we’ve just got to find a way to win against certain teams and we haven’t done that all year. It should not happen. Just another immature performance by us.”

He trimmed the deficit to 2-1, scoring off a shot from the left circle.

Thompson collected his double at 17:29, scoring from the slot after a nifty pass from Alex Tuch.

“I don’t think we got down on ourselves,” Tuch said. “I think we just tried to play a little simpler, get our energy up a little bit and it took us a little longer than wanted to. But all in all, I thought it was a good game by us and when we needed him to, ‘Beast’ (Levi) was keeping them out. And we just tried to capitalize on some of the mistakes.”

Thompson collected his hats at 15:26 of the third period. A shot from the point found its way through Jake Allen’s pads, and Thompson needed only to tap int home for the hats and a 3-2 lead to Buffalo.

JJ Peterka got in on the scoring, his empty-net strike at 19:23 pushed the Sabres’ lad to 4-2.

Allen made 31 saves in the loss.

Once again Allen has found himself in a position of playing behind a porous defense and lazy forward corps that refuses to backcheck effectively.