Buffalo Sabres Best Games of 2022-23: The nine-goal onslaught

On December 7th, 2022, the Buffalo Sabres put on what may have been their best performance offensively of the season in a 9-4 win over Columbus.

The Buffalo Sabres put up 296 goals last season, and that alone was one of the 2022-23 season’s biggest surprises. But when the Blue and Gold skated into Columbus in December 2022, ghosts of their recent eight-game losing streak was still entrenched in everyone’s mind, and we knew that a young team like the Sabres could fall right back into their losing ways at any moment.

But on this night, Buffalo went wild in the first period, with Dylan Cozens starting things off with a power play goal just three minutes and 21 seconds into the action. Just over two minutes later, Tage Thompson scored his first of what would be five goals of the night, before Rasmus Dahlin pitched in two minutes and 16 seconds later to give Buffalo a 3-0 lead in the game’s first eight minutes.

Actually, Tage scored again at the 7:50 mark, so let me correct myself and say that the Sabres held a 4-0 lead within the game’s first eight minutes. And less than five minutes later (can you believe it?) Tage had himself a hat trick, before he ended up scoring his fourth goal of the evening a little over four minutes after that.

Tage Thompson, Buffalo Sabres put on a show in Ohio

It’s one thing to lead 6-0 at the end of the first frame, but it’s even more remarkable to lead 9-2 after the second period, and this one involved Tage scoring his fifth goal of the night at the 16:07 mark, before Peyton Krebs scored just over a minute later, and Alex Tuch finished things off at the 19:16 mark.

While the Buffalo Sabres didn’t score in the third frame, they basically went into the NHL’s version of prevent mode, knowing that there was no way the Columbus Blue Jackets would recover and make this thing even remotely competitive.

Ironically enough for the Sabres, Columbus got its revenge nearly three months later on February 28th, and that game served as the catalyst for what would turn into the worst three weeks of the team’s season when they posted a 2-8-2 record between then and March 21st. Want more irony? During that stretch, the Sabres also toiled through a game where they lost 10-4 to the Dallas Stars.

Buffalo came back to face Columbus on the road for the final game of the season. And while it was meaningless in many aspects, Buffalo’s win did give them 91 points for the first time since 2010-11. It also handed them their 42nd and final win of the year, and it was also the first time they won over 50% of their games since that same season.

(Historical data provided by Hockey-Reference)