NEW YORK (AP) Jason Zucker scored the tiebreaking goal early in the third period, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 17 saves, and the Buffalo Sabres rallied to beat the New York Rangers 5-3 on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Zucker slid his 24th goal past Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin at 7:14 after teammate Alex Tuch had tied the contest with his 31st at 5:50 of the third.<\/p>\n
Zach Benson scored twice and Ryan McLeod added a goal for the Sabres, who will participate in the postseason for the first time since 2010-11.<\/p>\n
The Sabres won their 48th game in a dramatic turnaround from last year when they had 79 points and missed the playoffs for a 14th straight season. Buffalo is 22-6-3 in its last 31 games, including a league-best 16 wins and 34 points since the Olympic break.<\/p>\n
Alexis Lafreniere scored twice and Adam Fox also scored for the Rangers in their home finale. Shesterkin had 22 saves.<\/p>\n
New York finished with five wins in a seven-game homestand but just 14 wins in 41 home games overall.<\/p>\n
McLeod opened the scoring at 4:40 of the first. Benson then beat Shesterkin at 8:58.<\/p>\n
Lafreniere answered on the power play at 19:21, then scored his second of the night and 24th this season at 2:57 of the middle period.<\/p>\n
Fox put the Rangers ahead at 14:44 of the second before the Sabres rallied.<\/p>\n
Benson completed the scoring with his 12th goal into an empty net at 18:44.<\/p>\n
The Rangers will miss the playoffs for a second straight season after winning the Presidents’ Trophy in 2023-24 when they had 114 points and 55 wins, including 30 at home.<\/p>\n
Buffalo, under Lindy Ruff who also coached the team when they reached the Stanley Cup Final in 1999, has 104 points – two more than Tampa Bay and Montreal in the Atlantic Division.<\/p>\n
Rangers: Visiting Dallas Stars on Saturday to start season-ending three-game trip.<\/p>\n
Sabres: Hosting Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/p>\n
\n Copyright 2026 STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) Jason Zucker scored the tiebreaking goal early in the third period, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 17…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-592029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}