OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) \u2014 Lars Eller broke a third-period tie and the Ottawa Senators prevented Buffalo from wrapping up a drought-breaking playoff spot Thursday night, beating the Sabres 4-1.<\/p>\n
Buffalo will have to wait to end its NHL-record 14-season postseason skid, the second-longest active futility run in North America\u2019s four major sports behind the New York Jets and their 15-season slide.<\/p>\n
Eller deflected defenseman Artem Zub\u2019s shot from the point past goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen at 5:55 of the third.<\/p>\n
Buffalo defenseman Mattias Samuelsson opened the scoring at 8:49 of the second with a long wrist shot. Dylan Cozens tied it with 4:42 left in the second on a tip-in. He has 26 goals this season.<\/p>\n
Ridly Greig and Shane Pinto added empty-net goals.<\/p>\n
Linus Ullmark made 21 saves for Ottawa. The Senators \u2014 in the second wild-card spot in the East \u2014 opened a five-game homestand.<\/p>\n
Luukkonen stopped 20 shots for Buffalo.<\/p>\n
Senators defenseman Tyler Kleven left in the first period with an upper-body injury and did not return. The team has become increasingly thin on defense, missing Thomas Chabot, Jake Sanderson, Nick Jensen and others.<\/p>\n
Ottawa\u2019s Brady Tkachuk fought Logan Stanley late in the first period.<\/p>\n
The Sabres will have another chance to clinch a playoff spot Saturday when they are on the road to take on the Washington Capitals at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) \u2014 Lars Eller broke a third-period tie and the Ottawa Senators prevented Buffalo from wrapping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538562,"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-538561","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\/116341302191880413","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538561","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=538561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}