The Buffalo Sabres face the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday at 7 p.m. at KeyBank Center.<\/p>\n
Columbus remains alive for a wild card spot despite a recent slide, while Buffalo faces a quick turnaround after Wednesday\u2019s 5-3 win in New York.<\/p>\n
Against the Rangers, the Sabres struggled with puck management and trailed 3-2 through two periods. In the third, however, they outshot New York 8-1 and flipped the score with goals from Alex Tuch, Jason Zucker and Zach Benson.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got back to it in the third period, our game,\u201d Tuch said. \u201cSimple, fast, direct, a little chaos in front. Ended up with two net-front goals, so it was good.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comeback win \u2013 Buffalo\u2019s fourth this season when trailing after 40 minutes \u2013 provided another example of the Sabres earning two points without their \u2018A\u2019 game.<\/p>\n
It also gave them a two-point lead atop the Atlantic Division with a week remaining. Competitors Tampa Bay and Montreal play one another Thursday, and a regulation result there would help Buffalo\u2019s chances at home-ice advantage in the first round.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur fans have been incredible, so anytime you can play more games on home ice, the better,\u201d Zucker said. \u201cBut for us, our focus is getting to our game and feeling really comfortable with what we\u2019re doing and having the most confidence possible going into Game 1.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here are details before Thursday\u2019s puck drop in Buffalo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Buffalo Sabres face the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday at 7 p.m. at KeyBank Center. Columbus remains…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5100],"tags":[1107,229,5133,5,4,1108],"class_list":{"0":"post-548504","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\/116372979362514182","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548504","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=548504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}