The Florida Panthers, who were missing Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk, remained winless on the road, dropping a 5-2 decision to the Bufalo Sabres at KeyBank Arena.
Nate Schmidt got the visiting Cats off to a good start, opening the scoring 9:01 into the first period. Schmidt joined the rush and took a pretty pass from A.J. Greer before beating Devon Levi from between the circles. Jesper Boqvist picked up the secondary helper on Schmidt’s first goal as a Panther.
The Sabres equalized at 16:46 when Evan Rodrigues lost the puck in the corner and Payton Krebs passed to Jordan Greenway, who powered his way to the net and finished by roofing a backhand over a fallen Spencer Knight.
Tage Thompson gave Buffalo the lead 41 seconds later, taking a pass from Alex Tuch on the rush and snapping a wrister through Knight’s five-hole from the right circle. Connor Clifton collected the second assist. That’s one Knight has got to stop.
Henri Jokiharju made it 3-1 1:34 into the second when he one-timed a feed from Rasmus Dahlin after the two defensemen traded points. This looked like another stoppable shot, but it found it’s way in. The secondary assist went to Jack Quinn.
After Knight made a save on Ryan McLeod, Jason Zucker found Mattias Samuelsson and he was able to settle and fire the puck home from the top of the left circle with Knight unable to get back in position to grow the lead to three with 3:38 left in the frame.
The Panthers would come up with their first power-play goal of the season 2:20 later and it was a beauty. Rodrigues sent a pass from the left corner to the right point and then Sam Reinhart sent a knifing back door pass to Sam Bennett, who directed it into the back of the net for this third goal of the campaign.
Florida made a big third period push in Thursday’s loss to Ottawa, but that wasn’t the case in this one, as the Sabres held them to measly four shots on goal in the final frame.
Tuch would complete the scoring with an unassisted empty-netter with 1:12 left on the clock.
It was a poor night for Knight, who surrendered four goals on 26 shots in his first NHL start since February 18, 2023. The team in front of him wasn’t much better. There just wasn’t enough fight in these Cats against a Sabres team looking for its first win of the 2024-25 campaign.
Wings & Things
- Jordan Greenway earned the First Star nod for the balanced Sabres. In addition to his goal, Greenway finished with a plus-three rating and was credited with two shots, three blocks and a hit in 17:05 TOI.
- Patrick Giles made his NHL debut for the Panthers. Giles logged 7:34 of ice time and blocked two shots and was credited with one hit.
- Defenseman Gustav Forsling played in his 400th NHL game. Forsling had one shot on goal and was the only Panther to finish the game with a plus rating.
- Devon Levi stopped 23 of 25 shots to beat the team that selected him in the seventh round of the 2020 NHL Entry Draft.
- The pairing of Niko Mikkola and Dmitry Kulikov had a rough night with each of the vets going minus three.