Buffalo Sabres: Sabres Defeat Penguins 3-1 Behind Conor Sheary’s 2 Goal Night
By Pete Zehler
Hockey is back, and so are Sabres victories. The Buffalo Sabres were able to defeat the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-1 on opening night in Pittsburgh.
The Sabres won the opening face off, then came out aggressive early and attacked the Pittsburgh zone, at one point in the first Buffalo had outshot Pittsburgh 10-2. It’s not that the Sabres were just getting shots on goal, it was quality shots. The third line proved to effective early when Casey Mittelstadt fed Conor Sheary with a ice pass for his first goal of the game.
Later in the first Zemgus Girgensons broke away and had an uncontested shot on goal but unfortunately couldn’t connect and that was the best shot the Sabres had the rest of the period.
After intermission the Sabres came out slow in the second period and gave up a quick power play goal to Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin. However, immediately following the goal Buffalo started to attack aggressively again and dominated in shots on goal once more. Rasmus Dahlin and Sam Reinhart each had good looks to score early in the second, but just couldn’t finish. In a game that featured a boat load of nice passes from the Sabres, including 11 stretch passes, maybe no pass was better than Johan Larrson‘s pass to Victor Olofsson that was essentially a hail mary. Unfortunately Olofsson couldn’t finish.
Later in the period the pesky 3rd line came back out and got a powerplay goal. Once again it was a Casey Middelstadt dime right to Conor Sheary for his second goal of the game.
With 58 seconds to go in the second, Sam Reinhart and Rasmus Dahlin got a 2 on 2 breakaway. Dahlin used his elite speed to break ahead and Reinhart dropped in a beautiful pass right in the slot that Dahlin knocked home.
In the third the Sabres came out fairly conservative and tried to keep the puck away from the Penguins. The Sabres did an excellent job to kill an early Penguins power play. Playing a fantastic period in the goal, Carter Hutton made multiple difficult saves to keep the Sabres ahead.
Overall, Hutton played a good game in net. The Sabres aggressive offense was able to keep the pressure off of Hutton for most of the game. When the pressure did get to Hutton, Hutton did a fine job stopping shots from getting past him.
Later in the third the Sabres were able to do what they needed to do and they ultimately hung on for the opening night victory 3-1!
The Sabres outshot the Penguins 41-28 for the game, plus only had 6 giveaways compared to the Penguins 16.
Be sure to tune back in tomorrow morning for a more in depth breakdown of the Buffalo Sabres HUGE opening night victory!
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