VANCOUVER — Two games into the Buffalo Sabres’ six-game road trip, goalie Alex Lyon sat in the visiting locker room in Calgary after the team’s Sunday practice and wasn’t sure how to describe his situation. At that point, he hadn’t appeared in a game in nine days. Before that, he went 15 days between starts. He hadn’t won a game since Oct. 24. In Buffalo’s three-goalie rotation, Lyon had become the odd-man out.

“It’s been few and far between for me lately,” he said Sunday. “I’m just trying to be a good teammate. Honestly, at this point, I see it more as a service than getting myself prepared. That’s how I view it. I just try to keep a level head. There’s no secrets. I’m trying to say it (in) the most delicate way I can. It’s challenging for sure.

“I’m a competitive human being. That makes it difficult. It’s also part of it. You never know when you’re going to get your chance. It could be a month from now or 72 hours from now. Just have to try to stay ready and grind. I wish I had something more insightful, but that’s it.”

Lyon’s opportunity came the next night in Calgary when he played the third period after Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen got pulled from the game. Then Lyon got in the next night in Edmonton when Colten Ellis left the game with a concussion in the first period.

In that building with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on the other side, jumping into a game cold is a tough spot for a goalie. But right after entering the game, Lyon made a key save on a cross-ice play that helped protect Buffalo’s 1-0 lead.

“I was like, ‘F—— right, did my job,’” Lyon said with a smile after the game. “Excuse my language. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

The Sabres survived a late Oilers comeback to win 4-3 in overtime. That helped Lyon earn his first start in 13 days when the Sabres visited the Canucks in Vancouver on Thursday. He delivered by stopping 29 of the 31 shots he faced in a 3-2 win. The Sabres were outshot 11-2 in the third period, and the Canucks had a 14-2 advantage in scoring chances and a 33-5 advantage in shot attempts. Lyon needed to make key saves, and his teammates were selling out for blocked shots around him.

“Fabulous. He was totally invested,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said.

Ruff and Lyon’s teammates admired his attitude when he wasn’t getting playing time. Lyon played nine of the Sabres’ first 11 games and had a 2.90 goals against average to go with a .912 save percentage. But then Ellis had a strong debut, Luukkonen got healthy and Lyon lost a few starts in a row.

He was left trying to fine-tune his game in practice.

“It is easy to get in your head,” Lyon said. “Practice is honestly a different sport than playing a game for goalies. I try to remember that. Games are much more IQ-based and feel-based. That’s my strength as a goalie. Practice is really difficult.

“In a game, every goalie in the league stops roughly 90 percent of the shots. In practice, you might stop 65 percent of shots. Maintaining that confidence and focusing on the big picture as well.”

For now, though, the Sabres’ three-goalie logjam has loosened. Ellis is on injured reserve with a concussion, and Lyon seems to have wrestled the net back after spending more than a month as the third wheel.

The same guy who was searching for answers Sunday afternoon in Calgary was buzzing in the winning locker rooms postgame in Edmonton and Vancouver. As he said, the 30 minutes after a win are what make the work worth it.

“Your game goes up and down throughout the course of the year, but it’s just satisfying when you try to stay as ready as you can, and then it pays off,” Lyon said. “It is a grind, a mental grind. You have to love the difficult parts of it, too, otherwise you’re not going to be able to get through it.”

Quick hits

1. Zach Benson got to Vancouver still in search of his first goal of the season. He had 11 assists in 17 games and was impacting the game in other areas, but the goal drought was starting to creep into his head a little bit. Benson was deferring to the pass too often.

“It’s tough when you’re not scoring, but when you can impact the game in other ways, and I feel like my playmaking ability is on another level, too, you take the positives,” Benson said before the game against the Canucks. “You want to score, but my mindset is you get one, they can come in bunches. Hopefully, it can come sooner rather than later.”

It came Thursday night in front of his friends and family in Vancouver. Benson showed off a quick release on a power-play shot and beat Thatcher Demko for what turned out to be the winning goal.

Benny with a BLAST! 🚀#LetsGoBuffalo | #sabrehood pic.twitter.com/SqpHGQs17o

— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) December 12, 2025

“Definitely a weight off the shoulders,” Benson said. “You’re still like, ‘Hopefully this one wasn’t offside.’ But when the puck dropped, it was a relief.”

2. The Sabres finished Thursday’s game with 26 blocked shots. Conor Timmins and Tyson Kozak tied for the team lead with five each, and 12 different players blocked a shot. The biggest block came from Jordan Greenway, who sold out late in the third period to keep the game-tying goal off the board. This road trip started with three straight losses, including a frustrating game in Calgary. And in this game, they were without Jason Zucker (upper and lower body), Josh Norris (illness/soreness), Alex Tuch (illness), and the team still showed the desperate style of play they’ve been looking for.

“When it came down to it, we did everything we could,” Dahlin. “It was a lot of sacrifice and a hell of a third period. But we can do better. For us right now, it’s must-wins. Maybe it’s a mental thing. Today was unbelievable. I couldn’t even count how many blocked shots.”

3. Trevor Kuntar made his NHL debut because Tuch missed the game with an illness. Kuntar, a 24-year-old third-round pick of the Boston Bruins, signed an AHL deal with the Sabres organization over the summer. This week, the team decided to sign the Buffalo native to a one-year, two-way contract and call him up to the NHL roster. He had a hectic travel day Wednesday, taking a three-hour car ride from Belleville, Ont., to Toronto for a flight to Vancouver that arrived at midnight PT. That didn’t stop him from playing with a ton of tenacity in roughly five minutes of ice time in a fourth-line role.

ROOKIE LAP ALERT‼️

Welcome to the @NHL, Trevor Kuntar!#LetsGoBuffalo | @DYouville pic.twitter.com/UOuesXGOdj

— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) December 12, 2025

“I liked his shifts,” Ruff said. “He finished bodies hard. He competed hard on the puck. A lot of times, winning on the road isn’t about skill. It’s about the real hard compete. Every time I put him on the ice, the compete was good.”