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Buffalo Sabres right wing Alex Tuch (89) celebrates with Buffalo Sabres goaltender Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (1) after winning an NHL game against New York Rangers Wednesday in New York. (AP Photo\/Yuki Iwamura)<\/p>\n
NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Jason Zucker scored the tiebreaking goal early in the third period, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 17 saves, and the Buffalo Sabres rallied to beat the New York Rangers 5-3 on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Zucker slid his 24th goal past Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin at 7:14 after teammate Alex Tuch had tied the contest with his 31st at 5:50 of the third.<\/p>\n
Zach Benson scored twice and Ryan McLeod added a goal for the Sabres, who will participate in the postseason for the first time since 2010-11.<\/p>\n
The Sabres won their 48th game in a dramatic turnaround from last year when they had 79 points and missed the playoffs for a 14th straight season. Buffalo is 22-6-3 in its last 31 games, including a league-best 16 wins and 34 points since the Olympic break.<\/p>\n
Alexis Lafreniere scored twice and Adam Fox also scored for the Rangers in their home finale. Shesterkin had 22 saves.<\/p>\n
CAPITALS 4, MAPLE LEAFS 0<\/p>\n
TORONTO (AP) \u2014 Logan Thompson made 21 saves to register his third shutout of the season as Washington breathed life into their fading playoff hopes with a victory over the Toronto.<\/p>\n
Dylan Strome and Martin Fehervary, with a goal and an assist each, Ryan Leonard and Cole Hutson scored for Washington, which sits three points back of the Eastern Conference\u2019s final wild-card spot with three games left on the schedule.<\/p>\n
Anthony Stolarz suffered a lower-body injury early in the first period after stopping the second of two shots he faced for Toronto.<\/p>\n
Joseph Woll finished with 14 saves in just over 57 minutes of work for the Maple Leafs, who are set to miss the postseason for the first time since 2016.<\/p>\n
OILERS 5, SHARKS 2<\/p>\n
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) \u2014 Connor McDavid scored his 15th career hat trick and finished with five points Wednesday night, leading Edmonton to a victory over San Jose that moved them into sole possession of first place in the Pacific Division.<\/p>\n
McDavid controlled the game almost from the start, scoring on a power play in the first period and then twice in the second to make it 5-2. He also assisted on power-play goals by Vasily Podkolzin and Jack Roslovic to extend his NHL-leading point total to 133. The star center needs three goals in the final three games for his second career 50-goal season.<\/p>\n
Connor Ingram made eight saves on 10 shots in two periods for Edmonton. Tristan Jarry stopped all four shots he faced in the third.<\/p>\n
The win gave the Oilers 90 points, two more than Vegas in the division race. The Golden Knights have one game in hand.<\/p>\n
Macklin Celebrini scored his 42nd goal for San Jose to give him 108 points this season, the third-most for a teenager behind Wayne Gretzky\u2019s 137 and Sidney Crosby\u2019s 120.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buffalo Sabres right wing Alex Tuch (89) celebrates with Buffalo Sabres goaltender Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (1) after winning an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5100],"tags":[1107,229,5133,5,4,1108,2125,62394],"class_list":{"0":"post-549412","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","14":"tag-uncategorized","15":"tag-zucker"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116379538888067328","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549412","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=549412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}