Los Angeles, CA (WGR 550) - In the Buffalo Sabres 4-1 win over the Los Angeles Kings, it was the little things that just kept adding up into big things which brought them their fourth straight win and 12th win in 13 games.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen had to make a huge save 10 seconds into the game as he was eye-to-eye with Alex Laferriere. Los Angeles did take the lead at 10:48 when Artemi Panarin was alone in the left circle for a power play one-timer. That ended Buffalo's shutout streak at 174:55. From that point on Buffalo started moving their feet, causing turnovers and getting some offensive pressure on Anton Forsberg. Lindy Ruff said,
“I thought their compete was better than ours. I thought in the first 10 minutes they won more of the 50-50s, in the faceoff circle we were terrible, so now we’re chasing the puck around, but I thought they came after us as hard as they could.
“Then we competed harder, got to pucks quicker, I thought we got over pucks, you’ve just got to get into people and when you do that, you can win the battles.”
When I talk about little things it’s Zach Benson getting blasted by two of the Kings, yet he takes a very hard hit to make a play to Sam Carrick who goes to the net and scores. It’s Jason Zucker battling with Cody Ceci at the top of the crease on the power play and when Rasmus Dahlin takes the shot from the point, chaos develops and the puck goes in off of Ceci’s glove. It’s Tage Thompson seeing Los Angeles taking off on a dangerous 3-on-2 putting his head down and getting back, turning into a harmless 3-on-3. There were many examples of things like that in this game. Thompson said,
“We have a slogan that everybody ropes and everyone rides and it means there’s no job that’s too big or small for you to do out there and when everyone out there is doing those things that aren’t very pretty, but shows the guy next to you that you care about winning, it’s infectious and I think everyone in the room is doing it.”
Luukkonen and Alex Lyon have been as good as they could possibly be since Dec. 8. Buffalo has given up one goal in their last 224:07 and on this road trip they’ve outscored their opponent 11-1.
Buffalo is back tied in points with the Carolina Hurricanes for first in the Eastern Conference. The Canes still lead in points percentage .681 to .671. Both teams are in action on Sunday as Buffalo is in Anaheim to play the Ducks and Carolina visits the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Join Brian Koziol and me for the pregame at 7:00 when you’ll hear from Lindy Ruff and Peyton Krebs.