Cole Caufield and Lane Hutson each had a goal and an assist and the Montreal Canadiens recovered for a 4-3 shootout win against the visiting Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday.
Alexandre Texier scored the deciding goal in the shootout, Juraj Slafkovsky had two assists and Jacob Fowler made 14 saves for the Canadiens, who have won two straight games via the shootout.
Olen Zellweger scored twice and Mattias Samuelsson and Beck Malenstyn each had two assists for the Sabres, who have lost three of their last four. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 35 saves.
Trailing 3-1, Buffalo scored twice in the span of a minute early in the third period to tie it. Josh Norris pulled his team within one at 4:24, firing a shot from the middle of the blue line that went off Montreal defenseman Adam Engstrom past Fowler on the glove side.
Zellweger’s second of the night tied it 3-3 at 5:25, taking a pass from Zach Benson at the left point and sending through traffic to beat Fowler blocker side.
Zellweger gave Buffalo a 1-0 lead at 2:16 of the first period. He took a feed from Mattias Samuelsson at the left point and fired a snap shot through traffic that deflected off Engstrom’s and redirected past Fowler.
Hutson capitalized in the final seconds of a 5-on-3 power play to tie it. Slafkovsky returned a pass to Hutson, who then snapped it from above the right circle to beat a screened Luukkonen at 14:28, with eight seconds remaining in the two-man advantage.
Caufield put the hosts ahead 2-1 off the rush at 1:19 of the second period. Slafkovsky took a short drop pass from Nick Suzuki along the right side and dished it to Caufield in the left circle, where he quickly fired it past Luukkonen’s right arm.
The Canadiens took advantage of the Sabres’ inability to clear the zone to make it 3-1. Hutson intercepted a rim up the wall by the visitors, passed it to Zachary Bolduc who returned it to him, and Hutson fed Josh Anderson for a one-timer that went bar down on Luukkonen at 19:10.
