Ottawa, Ontario (WGR Sports Radio 550) - The Buffalo Sabres put forth a total team effort on Thursday night in order to come away with a victory in Canada's capital.
Playing their first game at the Canadian Tire Centre since New Year's Eve 2023, the blue and gold seized early momentum and cruised to a 4-0 shutout win over the Ottawa Senators.
Senators captain Brady Tkachuk was, as usual, in the center of things, as he delivered an early hit to the numbers on Jason Zucker. That sent the Sabres forward to the dressing room for a handful of shifts before his eventual return.
Then it became the Jack Quinn show, as the Sabres winger was able to net a pair of first-period tallies to give Buffalo a 2-0 lead.
The first goal came just past the halfway point of the period, as he converted off a pass from Ryan McLeod in space for his sixth goal of the season.
Exactly three minutes later, after just exiting the penalty box, Quinn got his second goal as he went in alone on Senators goalie Anton Forsberg and fired a wrist shot past his blocker side.
The Sabres stretched the lead to 3-0 just four minutes into the middle stanza.
Dylan Cozens capitalized on a ghastly Senators giveaway in their own end of the ice, and the Sabres forward blistered his ninth goal of the season past Forsberg.
The onslaught continued six minutes later, as McLeod was the beneficiary of a fortuitous bounce off the leg of Ottawa defenseman Thomas Chabot. The pass attempt-turned-goal was McLeod's seventh goal of the season, and third point of the night.
From there, Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and the rest of the team hunkered down, preserving the shutout in the third period of play.
Luukkonen turned away all 16 Senators shots in the third, and 35 overall en route to his second clean-sheet of the 2024-25 season, and the seventh shutout of his NHL career.
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SCORING RECAP
First Period:
BUF: 10:17 - Jack Quinn (6) (Ryan McLeod, Zach Benson); 13:17 - Jack Quinn (7) (Peyton Krebs, Ryan McLeod)
OTT: NONE
Second Period:
BUF: 4:11 - Dylan Cozens (9) (Unassisted); 10:22 - Ryan McLeod (7) (Rasmus Dahlin, Alex Tuch)
OTT: NONE
Third Period:
BUF: NONE
OTT: NONE
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Three Stars of the Game:
1.) Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen - BUF
2.) Jack Quinn - BUF
3.) Ryan McLeod - BUF
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What's next:
The Sabres return home to host the Seattle Kraken in Buffalo on Saturday afternoon. Puck drop at KeyBank Center is set for 4 p.m. EST with Dan Dunleavy and Rob Ray on the call.