In Pittsburgh, Buffalo’s Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 40 saves in a 3-1 Sabres win over the Penguins on Saturday.
“I’ve said it for weeks now, it’s a mentality,” Buffalo coach Don Granato said. “Talked about some mojo, some swagger. We didn’t have that and we played with fear. Tonight, you don’t come through that game unless you have that swagger and fearlessness.”
The Sabres improved to 17-19-4.
Buffalo took a 1-0 lead at 2:53 of the opening stanza on a strike by Alex Tuch. The Sabres geld the advantage into the third period.
“It’s incredible. I think that was the most confident, poised I’ve seen him play in his whole career,” Tuch said of Luukkonen. “He’s got a shutout or two, but that was just so much confidence. You know what? A couple of goals against that ended up going back and he didn’t get rattled at all.
“He went right back in there, made a couple big saves on breakaways. Never wavered. I thought he was reading the play really well.”
Rickard Rakell was the lone striker for the Pens, his third period power play goal at 7:49 tied the game, 1-1.
“Felt we were right there,” Rakell said. “We had zone time and we created pretty much every shift. It’s a tough bounce, getting those disallowed, but I didn’t think they affected us too much at the start of the game because they gave us momentum to keep going.”
The Penguins dropped to 19-15-4.
“There was a lot of the game that we really liked,” Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan said. “I feel like we generated an exorbitant amount of scoring chances. We had a number of Grade-A looks. They just didn’t go in. … We did a lot of things that we set out to accomplish. We just didn’t win on the scoreboard.”
Zemgus Girgensons scored what proved to be the game-winner at 15:22 of the third to restore the Sabres lead at 2-1.
Rasmus Dahlin hit into an empty net with just over a minute left on the game clock for the 3-1 final count.
The Penguins had two goals overturned after video review.
Tristan Jarry made 29 saves in the loss.
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