The Buffalo Sabres fell behind 1-0 to the New Jersey Devils, Tuesday night.
They promptly responded with five unanswered goals in a 5-1 thrashing of the visitors.
Jeff Skinner struck first for the Sabres and Casey Mittelstadt and Jake McCabe followed.
“After [Skinner] scored, we just kept rolling, then I scored, then we got a couple of other big goals, and I was excited for [Pilut], too, to get his first one,” CJ Smith said.
Smith and Lawrence Pilut also scored for the Sabres; for each it was their first NHL goal.
Buffalo improved to 23-14-6.
“I really liked the way our group played tonight. It was a total team effort. Even when we got down one early there, I thought we really controlled the period. We had a shot mentality and that was good to see,” Sabres head coach Phil Housley said of his team’ efforts.
Carter Hutton made 20 saves to get the win.
“It’s one of those things. We come back here in the room and we know we played well,” Hutton said. “We obviously weren’t up on the scoreboard, but we knew if we’d stick to it, things would go our way.”
Blake Coleman scored the lone Devils goal.
“We’ve got to figure this out,” Devils captain Andy Greene said. “It’s been way too long. It’s on us in here to stick together and play for each other and play hard for each other. That’s the best thing we can do and go from there.”
The Devils dropped to 16-19-7.
“If you look at tonight’s game, we could talk about nine different ways where we weren’t good enough in any facet of the game,” Devils head coach John Hynes said. “We all know what it is and it’s not good enough and we’ve got to fix it.”
[WATCH: All Devils vs. Sabres highlights]
Keith Kinkaid made 28 saves in the loss.
“It’s the same mistakes, unfortunately. We’ve got to find a way to just play with our structure. When we do, we play really well,” the Devils’ Andy Greene said.
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