The Buffalo Sabres have successfully bounced back from a pair of losses against Minnesota and in Carolina with three straight wins over Nashville, Montreal, and a 5-0 shutout against the New York Islanders at the UBS Arena on Saturday afternoon. Jason Zucker scored twice, Tage Thompson, Rasmus Dahlin, and Alex Tuch scored for Buffalo, who moved past Montreal into third place in the Atlantic Division.
Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff spoke to the media after the game:
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It seemed like your penalty kill got you the momentum back, like it did for the Islanders:
It looked like when we were on the power play, and we were on the penalty kill. I thought our penalty kill was fantastic too. Didn’t give up q chance. Did a real good job, Lyon stalled them out. I thought when we had chances to pressure, we did. Maybe a couple clears, we didn’t get down the ice. But other than that, these last two games, the times we have killed them have been very good.
You talked about this before. In the third period, you changed your lines, and had a defensive guy on each line. Was that your thought, since you don’t have the last change?
I changed them in the second, to be honest with you. I just didn’t like the way it was going. We just needed a little spark. Not really more about defensive guys, just more about seeing if we could get a little bit of life in the lines that generate a little bit more. And I thought, the McLeod line came out at the start of two periods and got us a goal. Benson and Thompson have played a lot together, and Ostlund has played such good hockey, that line looked pretty good too. I think sometimes inside of a game, you just have to mix things up. We’re not getting the matchups. They were trying to match up their heavy guys against us. So I thought, try to get away from it.
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How big of a spark has Jason Zucker provided in recent games?
Jason Zucker has kind of sparked you guys the last couple of years. We need that. We need that out of our veteran guys. He not only scores two goals, but he lays himself out on a big blocked shot too. I look at that sometimes as being bigger than scoring. He’s putting himself first and forefront to help win a hockey game.
Mattias Samuelsson has always been a defensive contributor, but how big has his offense this season?
I think we’ve all seen the creating offense and making good plays. He’s really been a rock back there on both sides of the puck when it comes to killing plays, and it comes to joining even. The shot to Tuch on the fifth goal. I mean, perfect shot. Tuch got his blade underneath it, but his outlet passes first and foremost, I thought were excellent.
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