Coming into Thursday night, New York Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin had a league-leading .932 save percentage to go with a 2.22 goals-against average and a 6-2-1 record. The Sabres were 15th in the NHL in goals per game.
What came next? The Sabres scored five goals on 12 shots and chased Shesterkin from the game in the second period of a dominant 6-1 win over the Rangers. It started with Rasmus Dahlin beating Shesterkin five-hole on the first shot of the game 26 seconds into the first period. The Sabres managed only five more shots in the rest of the back-and-forth first period, but the floodgates opened in the second period.
1️⃣ shot, 1️⃣ goal!
The captain puts us up 1-0! pic.twitter.com/3AVSz7f00M
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) November 8, 2024
Dylan Cozens didn’t have a five-on-five goal all season before this game, but he got one when he beat Shesterkin with a snapshot 2:45 into the second period. Later in the period, the Sabres scored three goals in a span of 2:12 of game time.
Tage Thompson started it off with a wrist shot from the slot. He now leads the NHL with nine five-on-five goals this season. Jordan Greenway added to the lead 30 seconds later when Jason Zucker made a beautiful play to crash the net and fed him a perfect pass for his eighth assist of the season. One minute and 42 seconds after that, Sam Lafferty made it 5-0 when he finished a perfect backhand setup from Beck Malenstyn. That was the 12th and final shot Shesterkin saw in the game
In total, 11 Sabres had points in the second period. All four forward lines produced a goal. Every Buffalo forward had a point in this game. A team that has been overly reliant on its top line for offense got scoring from all over the lineup against the best goalie in the NHL to rout one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference.
The Sabres have now won two straight after their three-game losing streak put them in an early season hole. Buffalo is 6-7-1, far from an ideal place to be. But the Sabres should have some confidence building after back-to-back wins by a combined score of 11-2. The challenge now is building on it. Buffalo’s next four games are against the Flames, Canadiens, Blues and Flyers. All four are bottom-10 teams in Dom Luszczyszyn’s model at The Athletic. Go on a winning streak, and this season could get interesting. Here are some other thoughts on the win.
1. This was a big night for Buffalo’s second line. That group has been holding the Sabres back too often this season but that wasn’t the case on Thursday. Not only did Cozens and Benson score, but Quinn got in on the action with an impressive assist on Benson’s goal. That line also controlled play. When they were on the ice at five-on-five, the Sabres had a 7-0 advantage in shots, 5-1 advantage in scoring chances and 79 percent of the expected goals. It helps that Benson is fully healthy after missing time with an ankle injury. The Sabres would love for this game to springboard that line to more performances like this one.
2. Buffalo’s penalty kill deserves a lot of credit for how this game turned out. The Rangers came into this game with a top-10 power play in the league but went 0-for-4. Three of those power plays were in the first 25 minutes of the game before the Sabres had extended the lead. This game could have swung the other way if the Rangers had gotten rolling on the power play. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, who stopped 25 of 26 shots in this game, made four saves on high-danger shots on the penalty kill alone.
3. Lindy Ruff stuck with his lineup changes from the team’s win against the Senators on Tuesday. That meant Dennis Gilbert, Connor Clifton and Jacob Bryson were all in on defense, and Mattias Samuelsson and Henri Jokiharju were the healthy scratches. Gilbert and Bryson spent long stretches of the season as healthy scratches and have looked ready to jump into the lineup. They’ve both been regularly staying on the ice late to get extra work. But they are also two of the most upbeat guys in the locker room, despite their lack of playing time. That’s not by accident.
“Just staying with it and staying positive,” Gilbert said this week. “We’re all competitors and all eight of us want to play every night, but to be a good teammate and being fun around the room, to be laughing and joking and being a fun person to be around, that’s a big part of it. That’s something I’ve learned over my career is to make sure the person you are isn’t changing based on the playing circumstance. You have to be a good teammate and a good person no matter what.”
Gilbert has nine hits in three games this season. Jokiharju has 10 in the 12 games he’s played. That’s an element Buffalo was missing on the back end. Gilbert and Clifton play with a physicality the other defensemen lack. Bryson, meanwhile, has meshed well with Owen Power on Buffalo’s second defense pair. The Sabres have 55 percent of the expected goals with Bryson on the ice at five-on-five the last three games. I wouldn’t expect Ruff to make any changes given the way those two have played and the fact that Buffalo has won the last two games.
4. The flip side of these lineup decisions is that Samuelsson, who is in the second season of a seven-year contract extension that pays him more than $4 million per year, has been a healthy scratch for two straight games.
“It’s basically just a kick in the butt,” Samuelsson said this week. “I mean, if you asked me before I got scratched, I would have told you that I needed to be better anyways. So, it’s not like it was a secret beforehand. You could say a little added motivation, but get back to work. I plan on playing in the NHL a long time. You’re going to have your ups and downs, so I’m not too worried about it.”
Samuelsson is also an alternate captain, so the move by Ruff was eye-opening. But it’s also working. Samuelsson said these are Ruff’s decisions to make and he obviously hasn’t been good enough if he’s even in the conversation to be out of the lineup. He knows he needs to make quicker decisions with the puck and be more physical.
For the last two years, Samuelsson often played on the top pair with Dahlin and got 20-plus minutes a night. This season, he’s been playing just 16:51 per game on the third pair. He’s been on the ice for eight of Buffalo’s 11 short-handed goals against. Now that Bryson and Gilbert have played well, Ruff has more means to create internal competition.
(Photo: Dennis Schneidler / Imagn Images)
