Kucherov’s four-point night beats Samuelsson’s pair of goals in 4-3 Buffalo loss
Boxscore
Score: Buffalo Sabres 3-4 Tampa Bay Lightning OT
Shots: BUF 26-35 TBL
Buffalo Sabres Goals: Mattias Samuelsson 10 (Unassisted), Mattias Samuelsson 11 (McLeod, Quinn), Doan 18 PPG (Thompson, Dahlin)
Tampa Bay Lightning Goals: Nikita Kucherov 29 (Guentzel), Oliver Bjorkstrand 9 PPG (Raddysh, Kucherov), Raddysh 17 (Kucherov, Hagel), Guentzel OT (Kucherov, Moser)
Quick Thoughts
Sheer Courage
The Buffalo Sabres have a surprisingly impressive record when being outshot in games, but a lot of that is because they have relied on quality over quantity in games of that nature, and that they have been getting some impressive goaltending. At this point it’s pretty much a fact – the Sabres score four or more, they will win.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen was playing some of his best hockey when he went out injured. Alex Lyon for his part just recently saw his ten-game win streak ended, and is still on an eight-game road win streak. Colten Ellis got a chance to play and stymied the Bolts time and again tonight, keeping the Sabres in the game despite the barrage of shots that came his way.
The Sabres went behind in the first period, but just like last night they refused to be buried. And then against all odds, twice in the third period they took the lead but unfortunately were unable to seal the win as a well-oiled Bolts machine overwhelmed them and drew level, before winning it with less than a minute left in overtime.
Mikael Mattias Freaking Samuelsson
When the forwards were getting stymied in Tampa, Mattias Samuelsson decided he was going to step up and show them how it’s done. Both his goals were sniping masterpieces.
In the first period, he corralled a puck at the blue line, and then with the Bolts backing off him, he stepped up all the way to the line and then proceeded to embarrass Vasilevskiy at the near post with a laser that got in above his pads.
With the Sabres being rocked on their heels in the third, Ellis made a timely save and then Buffalo zipped right down the ice with Sammy leading the way. Once again Tampa had failed to do their homework on the Sabres’ defenseman because they gave him all day to smoke a shot over Valievskiy’s left shoulder to give Buffalo an unlikely lead.
Samuelsson’s 11th goal of the season draws him level with Rasmus Dahlin, and with Bowen Byram on ten, it makes the Sabres the only team in the league to have three defensemen to have scored double digit goals.
Kucherov Though, Wow
I was not lucky enough to have watched Gilbert Perreault play, though from what I have seen of him through grainy YouTube videos, he was nothing short of incredible. Watching Nikita Kucherov play makes you feel that way, kind of.
There are very few forwards in the game today who are this dominant. Every time Kucherov was on the ice it looked like he could make something happen. All four Lightning lines were >60% tonight on Corsi For percentage, but the top line of Hagel – Guentzel – Kucherov were at 70.4% with an xGF% of 78.7%
Kucherov picked up his second consecutive four-point night, and the Bolts are 25-4-2 in games has more than a point, and you could see why. His opening goal was an avoidable one coming off a Sabres error, but the three assists after that were all works of beauty.
On the long overtime arc he dropped to set Guentzel up for the breakaway gamewinner, he had fanned on his first opportunity which was a warning for Peyton Krebs, but the Sabres forward did not heed the warning and once Kucherov released his no-look pass, there was only one way this game was ending.
At The Horn
On the second night of a road back-to-back, and possibly propelled by Moms’ Vibes™, the Sabres came agonizingly close to making it a dream-like four-point Florida road trip. Still they come back home with three hard-earned points to play one more Eastern contender before going on a well-deserved Olympic break to heal and recuperate.
The Lightning, even shorn three centers, are a formidable outfit as they showed tonight. They are also the product of a core that has been together for a few years now, and it seems like the whole team is just on the same wavelength on and off the puck.
Buffalo are only just starting to reap the benefits of building chemistry, but it’s not a stretch to think they are capable of playing better than this. Sure, they don’t have any outright superstars like Kucherov, and they do need more players to step up into that ‘great’ tier, but we’re trending in the right direction for sure.