Sabres brace for challenge vs. Golden Knights (Mar 09, 2018)
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- With their first shootout victory of the season on Thursday night, the Buffalo Sabres continue to surprise with their recent bounce-back efforts.
The Sabres will look to make it two in a row with a matinee game against the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday.
A repeat performance will be difficult against the Golden Knights, as Vegas (43-19-5) arrives in Buffalo with one of the best records in the league. The expansion franchise has easily exceeded all expectations this season and is getting ready for what it hopes will be a lengthy postseason run.
Vegas is familiar with bounce-back efforts as well.
The Golden Knights are coming off a 4-0 win over Detroit on Thursday, which came after a 4-1 loss to Columbus on Tuesday night.
"I thought it was a real good, solid, complete effort by everybody," Vegas coach Gerard Gallant said, according to the team's website. "I thought we played real well."
In that win over the Red Wings, Alex Tuch and Cody Eakin both broke scoring slumps with a pair of goals apiece as the Golden Knights tied an NHL record for the most road wins (19) by an expansion club.
"It feels pretty good," Tuch said, according to the team's website. "I was able to get it early and I wasn't able to get the hat trick and neither was Eakin, but I still thought we played really well as a line. We had a lot of chances and a lot of good open looks."
On Thursday, Buffalo (22-35-11) topped the Ottawa Senators in a 4-3 shootout victory. Robin Lehner made two saves in the shootout -- his first saves of the season in the format after allowing eight shootout goals against -- and Jacob Josefson scored the winner for Buffalo.
The bounce-back effort came after a dreadful 5-1 loss at home to the Calgary Flames on Wednesday.
"That's sometimes how it is," Lehner said, per the team's website. "Just like a goal scorer who hasn't scored in a while. You get your first one, you get your confidence back. It's nice. Hopefully I can build off that one in the future. We needed this one today. It was a pretty fun game."
Marco Scandella, Sam Reinhart and Scott Wilson scored in regulation for the Sabres, who are 5-3 in their last eight games.
"I just think our focus and the response we made was a great response," Buffalo coach Phil Housley said, according to the team's website. "After having a, I would say, poor effort in our own building, we travel, come out here and I liked the way we started. We were physical, you could see the determination in our players and I think from top to bottom everybody contributed."
The Sabres will be without winger Kyle Okposo, who suffered a concussion against the Senators on Thursday and will be out indefinitely. Okposo suffered the injury following a collision with Bobby Ryan.
"It was an unfortunate play, they just ran into each other," Housley said. "I thought he looked really good on the flight home, so we'll just have to go day-to-day with that, see where he's at."
