In Elmont, the New York Islanders picked up a 4-1 win over the visiting Buffalo Sabres on Thursday night.
Semyon Varlamov made 36 saves in the Isles win.
Mathew Barzal hit for a goal and three points in the New York win.
“I think he’s obviously a big part of our game,” the Islanders’ Noah Dobson said. “To see him back, he was flying around tonight. … I think it’s nice when guys are out for a little bit and we get them back. They definitely bring an energy to the team, and I think you saw that tonight.”
New York improved to 9-12-6.
Kyle Okposo struck for the lone Sabres goal.
“To start the game, we were just making little mistakes that we don’t usually make,” Okposo said. “Our puck management, I turned one over in the middle of the ice. … So I’ll take responsibility for that start to the game, and I just think we didn’t manage it well enough through the neutral zone, especially, and entering their zone. Their gaps were really good. They have great sticks. They got a lot of sticks on pucks and we didn’t make clean plays. When you’re not doing that, you just got to get it behind them and play simple. We just didn’t do that tonight. … Call it whatever you want … we didn’t mentally make the correct decisions at all tonight.”
The Sabres dropped to 10-17-5.
After Okposo tied the game, 1-1, the Isles scored three times to put the game away.
Kieffer Bellows scored for a 2-1 lead to the Isles, and Anders Lee added a power play marker in the middle frame for a 3-1 advantage heading to the third period.
“I think Kieffer has been on a slow and steady burn where’s taken on the challenges that we’ve given him,” New York head coach Barry Trotz said. “I’ve pulled him out of the lineup sometimes … but he’s making a case for himself. I said to him, as he gets to be a more veteran player, a guy that’s played more games, he’s got to just play well. Any time that you’re in there, bank some good [credentials], and when you do, can’t take you out of the lineup. He’s doing that.”
New York’s Dobson scored at 11:43 of the third to make the 4-1 final.
Malcolm Subban made 28 saves in the Buffalo loss.
“These are great lessons for us to learn,” Sabres assistant coach Matt Ellis said. “In this league, there’s not time to sit and hope for things. You take each step as a learning experience and obviously, we’ll look at the film. We’ll have discussions. We’ll recalibrate tomorrow in Boston once we go through the video and again, for us, we’ve had the mentality since Day One that it’s about getting better every day. There are some lessons from tonight’s game that we need to learn from and take with us. Look at how a mature team approaches a game like tonight.”
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