Sabres stop Panthers

There was no special comeback for the Florida Panthers on Sunday.

The Buffalo Sabres’ Linus Ullmark made sure of that with 43 saves to help the Sabres defeat the Panthers, 5-2.

“He’s been doing it all year for us,” Eichel said. “Timely saves like that are so important. He’s the backbone, him and [Carter Hutton], of this team. They play like that, they give us a chance to win every night. There’s a lot of confidence in the group in front of them.

“It was awesome to see him. I thought he did a great job coming out, playing the puck. I thought he controlled the game well and he allowed us to kind of find our game.”

Noel Acciari and Brett Connolly were the only Panthers skaters to get past Ullmark

“Obviously we had our chances, but it’s not good enough,” Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said. “We’ve got to play better. [Buffalo] didn’t get that many shots, but they got a lot of good chances to score and they got a lot of 2-on-1s and breakaways. [We] left [Montembeault] by himself in the net. We just have to clean those [up] and play a lot better.”

Eichel had a goal for the Sabres and Jeff Skinner opened the scoring as the Sabres built a 3-0 lead.

Zemgus Girgensons struck twice for Buffalo.

“That’s what we need, we need other lines scoring,” Sabres coach Ralph Krueger said. “I thought we had a real strong training day of practice [Saturday]. We had multiple meetings since the Boston game (a 3-2 loss on Thursday), and I never felt anybody lose spirit or lose confidence in what we’re doing here. That’s one of the reasons the group was able to step up today.”

Victor Olofsson also scored for the Sabres, his goal made the count 4-2 in favor of their favor.

“It was good to see us put a full 60 [minutes] in,” Eichel said. “That’s a really good team over there and obviously they can score with the best of them, so it was nice to that we got a lead and were able to play with it. I thought we did a good job of trying to find a way to get that next goal.”

[WATCH: All Sabres vs. Panthers highlights]

Sam Montembeault made 21 saves in the loss.

“I think tonight’s game is one of those games where you think you might be playing OK, but whether you’re outshooting or out-chancing them and out-possessing them but you’re still behind for reasons,” Panthers coach Joel Quenneville said. “We’ve been playing with that danger all year long of giving up goals that don’t even look like there is a chance it ends up in our net and all of a sudden you’re down a goal, down two goals. We’ve got to make them earn them.”