beat the New York Rangers 5-2<\/a>\u00a0and give the Sabres 12 victories in their past 13 games.<\/p>\n\u201cMade some huge saves,\u201d said teammate Mattias Samuelsson, who scored. \u201cHe played unreal all game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ellis had not played since getting concussed Dec. 9 against Edmonton. He was called upon by veteran coach Lindy Ruff and his staff after Alex Lyon got injured and an opportunity presented itself.<\/p>\n
In net for just his ninth game in the league after Buffalo claimed him off waivers from St. Louis prior to the start of the season, Ellis shook off the rust early and was dialed in. But the heat was really on when he allowed a bad goal early in the third period to Vincent Trocheck.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one I definitely want back, but we were still up by one at that point, so you\u2019ve just got to kind of find a way to get through it,\u201d Ellis said. \u201cI just tried to do whatever I could to not let in any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ellis succeeded, turning aside the final 12 shots he faced to improve to 5-3.<\/p>\n
\u201cA-plus game, for sure,\u201d Ruff said. \u201cBut we know when we put him in, he\u2019s been ready to play. He gave us a great game. He worked hard to get back and be ready, and I thought did an excellent job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lyon and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen had split the goaltending duties over the past month, during which Ellis went to the rink every day focused on working on his game and avoiding complacency. But practice can only do so much.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very excited to get back,\u201d Ellis said.<\/p>\n
His teammates were glad to get him back after admiring Ellis\u2019 work ethic even when he wasn\u2019t getting rewarded with starts.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a real competitor,\u201d winger Josh Doan said. \u201cHe battles with us every day, and he\u2019ll be out there till the last guy\u2019s off the ice. He\u2019s a guy you know what you\u2019re going to get out of him every night, and when he makes some big saves like that in the third period, it just continues to build the confidence that we already have in him. And he showed up big for us in a big game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Colten Ellis had never played at Madison Square Garden before, so the 25-year-old Buffalo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5100],"tags":[1249,1251,1107,229,5133,5,40,4,2944,1108,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-401608","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-buffalo-sabres","8":"tag-app-sports","9":"tag-associated-press","10":"tag-buffalo","11":"tag-buffalo-sabres","12":"tag-buffalosabres","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-rochester","17":"tag-sabres","18":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115876355500067211","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}