LAS VEGAS — Casey Mittelstadt scored twice in Buffalo’s four-goal third interval, Devon Levi made 32 saves and the Sabres rallied to beat the Vegas Golden Knights 5-2 on Friday evening.
Zach Benson and former Golden Knight Alex Tuch additionally scored for Buffalo within the third and Dylan Cozens had a first-period objective and added two assists.
Mittelstadt tied it at 2 at 5:01 of the third. Benson gave Buffalo the lead at 9:29, then arrange Tuch’s objective with 8:48 left. Mittelstadt capped the scoring with an empty-net objective for his eighth of the season.
“I think they scored with 14 minutes left, so we had 14 minutes to come back and we got a lot of skill in this room,” Benson stated. “So, you’re down by one, we’re not too scared, we got a lot of weapons in this room and we saw that tonight.”
For Levi, it was a celebration of kinds, throughout his first journey to Las Vegas.
“I think we were all excited for this game,” Levi stated. “Personally, having the ability to go towards the Cup champs from final 12 months, it’s fairly particular. I believe everybody needs to beat them, it’s a terrific workforce on the opposite facet of the ice.
PHOTOS: Mittelstadt scores twice in Buffalo’s 4-goal third, Sabres rally to beat Golden Knights 5-2
“It’s really cool being in Vegas, my first time here, so I just enjoyed myself. I just felt like a little kid in Disneyland the last few days. Just a great trip overall.”
Buffalo has received three of its final 4 conferences with the Golden Knights, together with two straight in Las Vegas.
“It was a big challenge tonight going against the defending Cup champs,” Cozens stated. “We talked about it before that it was going to be a man’s game. And I think we did a lot of things good tonight, we played kind of a full 60, we didn’t make too many mistakes and we capitalized on our chances.”
Ivan Barbashev and Jack Eichel scored for defending champion Vegas, and Logan Thompson made 22 saves. Former Sabres star Eichel has a nine-game factors streak.
Buffalo, 10-1-1 when scoring first, acquired on the board instantly after coming off an influence play. Cozens skated into the slot and sniped a shot previous Thompson to provide the Sabres the lead at 7:42 of the primary.
The lead didn’t final, although, as Barbashev skated in and cleaned issues up with a flood of visitors in entrance of Levi. Eichel gave the Knights a 2-1 lead early within the third interval when he snared a rebound from Paul Cotter’s miss and ripped it previous Levi.
This time it was Buffalo with a right away response, with Mittelstadt beating Thompson with a shot from the fitting circle.
“We had a ton of great looks early,” Vegas captain Mark Stone stated. “It would have been nice to get out the first period with a lead. We put ourselves in the right position up 2-1 with 12 minutes left in the game. We got to close those out.”
UP NEXT
Sabres: At Arizona on Saturday evening.
Golden Knights: Host Ottawa on Sunday evening.
