The Buffalo Sabres could not overcome an early three-goal deficit in a 6-2 loss to the Washington Capitals at Capital One Arena on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The game was played hours after the Sabres officially clinched their first playoff berth since 2011 as the result of the Detroit Red Wings\u2019 loss to the New York Rangers.<\/p>\n
The Sabres dropped consecutive games in regulation for the first time since they lost three straight from Dec. 3 to 8. They are now tied for second place in the Atlantic Division with the Montreal Canadiens, who won their eighth straight game on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Washington jumped ahead early with three goals scored in a span of 2:37 by Jakob Chychrun, Dylan Strome and Connor McMichael. Buffalo goaltender Alex Lyon was replaced at that point by Colten Ellis, who made his first appearance since Feb. 3.<\/p>\n
Rasmus Dahlin and Beck Malenstyn responded with first-period goals for the Sabres to cut the deficit to 3-2, but that was all they could generate against Capitals goaltender Logan Thompson despite 39 shots and five power plays, including an abbreviated 5-on-3.<\/p>\n
Lyon stopped two of five shots in 5:52. Ellis made 17 saves on 19 shots in 53:19.<\/p>\n
Buffalo has five regular-season games remaining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Buffalo Sabres could not overcome an early three-goal deficit in a 6-2 loss to the Washington Capitals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5100],"tags":[1107,229,5133,5,4,1108],"class_list":{"0":"post-543483","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-buffalo-sabres","8":"tag-buffalo","9":"tag-buffalo-sabres","10":"tag-buffalosabres","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-sabres"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116356818017108193","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543483","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=543483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}