Four days ago the Buffalo Sabres ended the New York Rangers’ perfect 4-0 start. Saturday night the Sabres had the tables turned on them against a team unlikely to end their perfect streak, the Atlanta Thrashers.
Atlanta took advantage of the Sabres’ weary legs in the first period, pressuring goalie Patrick Lalime from the opening faceoff. Buffalo, which was playing its second game in as many nights, allowed 19 shots to the Thrashers in the first as the Sabres tried to match Atlanta’s intensity. The most shots the Sabres had allowed in a game all year was 28, making the Thrashers’ nearly 20 shots more than a success.
With fans still settling into their seats, Atlanta was able to get on the board first. Kari Lehtonen deflected a shot right to Todd White, who promptly put the puck on the stick of Ilya Kovalchuk in the neutral zone. With Buffalo’s defense sucked in, Kovalchuk was able to do what he does best: work in open ice. His wrist shot over Lalime’s shoulder was only Kovalchuk’s second goal of the year and gave Atlanta a 1-0 lead.
It was the first time since last Saturday’s game in Florida that Atlanta scored the game’s first goal. “Fast starts are always nice. The one positive we’ve had out of the last few games is we’ve started out real well,” Eric Christensen said about the big first period.
The aggressive offense continued, as Atlanta showed the attacking mentality of John Anderson’s offense for the first time all season. Throughout the first, Atlanta put the puck on the net, leaving Lalime on his back to make spectacular save after spectacular save to keep the game within reach for Buffalo.
Atlanta even seemingly ended its streak of horrible second periods, allowing no goals through the first 16 minutes of the second. “We need to stay up and learn to bury teams when we have them where we want them. Tonight we had that, we just had some unfortunate calls go against us,” Christensen said. “Overall we played sixty minutes, and I thought we totally deserved to win.”
That victory didn’t seem so clear after the game turned at the four-minute mark of the second when the Sabres earned a minute-long two-man advantage. Trailing by two, the Sabres got a goal from the NHL’s goal-scoring leader, Thomas Vanek, who put a wrist shot from just outside the circle past Lehtonen.
Atlanta also had to contend with a four-minute minor by Niclas Havelid at the halfway mark of the third period. Lehtonen saw plenty of traffic up front during the three and a half minutes of the power play, keeping Atlanta up by one. The threat ended as Vanek knocked the mask off of Lehtonen, giving Atlanta a 1:30 power play.
In the end, Buffalo wouldn’t need the man advantage to tie the game, instead scoring off an Atlanta turnover. Eric Boulton turned over the puck in his own zone, leading to a Jason Pominville shot that was seemingly caught in Lehtonen’s glove. The puck instead popped out, falling right onto Pominville’s stick before ending in the back of the net.
“[Pominville] was shooting real close, and I just tried to react. I got a little piece of it but not enough.” Lehtonen said about the game-tying goal. “It was just an awful looking bounce after that.”
The game remained tied at two after regulation and the teams skated to a tie after the overtime. In the shootout, Kovalchuk and Slava Kozlov scored for Atlanta, while Alex Kotalik scored the only shootout goal for Buffalo. The game ended when Lehtonen forced Vanek’s penalty shot wide to the left, giving Atlanta the shootout 2-1, and the win 3-2.
Boral can be reached at jboral@scoreatl.com.
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