Boxscore<\/p>\n
Score: Buffalo Sabres 2\u20133 Chicago Blackhawks (OT)
Shots: BUF 23\u201325 CHI
Buffalo Sabres Goals: Power (Norris, Quinn); Thompson PPG (Quinn, Dahlin)
Chicago Blackhawks Goals: Nazar PPG (Bedard, Kantserov); Nazar (Rinzel, Moore); Donato (Frondell, Rinzel).<\/p>\n
Quick Thoughts<\/p>\n
A Good Start on the Road<\/p>\n
After giving up eight to Tampa Bay the night before, the Sabres needed a good first period in Chicago. They got one. Owen Power opened the scoring nine minutes in with a slap shot from the circle. Frank Nazar tied it from in close on the power play, but Tage Thompson answered with a wrister from the circle on Buffalo\u2019s own man advantage. Jack Quinn assisted on both Sabres goals, and Buffalo took a 2\u20131 lead into the intermission.<\/p>\n
Where Was the Third Goal?<\/p>\n
Buffalo outshot Chicago 10\u20136 in the second, but Spencer Knight kept it a one-goal game. That was the period where the Sabres had their best chance to put some distance between themselves and the Blackhawks. Instead, they went into the third still asking two first-period goals to hold up.<\/p>\n
Chicago made them pay at 8:22 of the third. Nazar got his stick on the puck in the slot and redirected it past Alex Lyon for his second of the night. Buffalo had a power play less than two minutes later and couldn\u2019t regain the lead. The Sabres finished 1-for-4 on the man advantage. They got one when they needed it in the first and could\u2019ve used another right there.<\/p>\n
Donato Gets the Last Word<\/p>\n
Ryan Donato scored from the high slot 3:12 into overtime to give Chicago the win. Lyon finished with 22 saves, and Knight stopped 21, including every Buffalo shot after Thompson\u2019s goal. Chicago snapped a six-game skid. Buffalo\u2019s losing streak is now three.<\/p>\n
At The Horn<\/p>\n
A point on the second night of a back-to-back is useful. It still feels like Buffalo left one in Chicago. The Sabres got a goal from Power, a power-play goal from Thompson, and two assists from Quinn. They had the lead after 40 minutes. What they didn\u2019t get was another goal over the final 47 minutes. There are too many passengers in each game lately. This team\u2019s strength was depth last year, but it hasn\u2019t shown up yet. The Sabres were in a worse position at this time last year before they went on a run, but that\u2019s what makes it more frustrating, knowing that this team is better. A lot of players had career years last year, and while that can\u2019t happen every year, only Power, Benson, Quinn, and Ostlund have improved; Tage and Samuelsson are what they should be, but the rest have regressed. Being in the toughest division makes it worse when they lose games they had the lead in.<\/p>\n
Next up is Dallas on Saturday at 8 p.m. ET, the second stop on the six-game road trip. If Buffalo takes another lead into the third, I\u2019d like to see them spend more of it looking for the next goal.<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boxscore Score: Buffalo Sabres 2\u20133 Chicago Blackhawks (OT)Shots: BUF 23\u201325 CHIBuffalo Sabres Goals: Power (Norris, Quinn); Thompson PPG…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5115],"tags":[521,37,96,5263,5,4],"class_list":["post-710415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-blackhawks","tag-blackhawks","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-blackhawks","tag-chicagoblackhawks","tag-hockey","tag-nhl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/117608176893690111","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710415","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=710415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}