{"id":190395,"date":"2026-04-09T02:25:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T02:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/190395\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T02:25:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T02:25:18","slug":"sabres-rally-past-rangers-in-3rd-period-take-hold-of-1st-place-in-atlantic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/190395\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabres rally past Rangers in 3rd period, take hold of 1st place in Atlantic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Buffalo was in a three-way tie for first with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Montreal Canadiens entering the night. But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/alex-tuch-8477949\" title=\"Alex Tuch\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alex Tuch<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/jason-zucker-8475722\" title=\"Jason Zucker\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jason Zucker<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/zach-benson-8484145\" title=\"Zach Benson\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Zach Benson<\/a> scored in the third period, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/ukko-pekka-luukkonen-8480045\" title=\"Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen<\/a>\u00a0finished with 17 saves to lift the Sabres ahead of the Lightning and Canadiens.<\/p>\n<p>The Sabres (48-23-8), who hadn&#8217;t been in first place by themselves since April 1, have three games remaining. Tampa Bay and Montreal, both off Wednesday, each have four left.<\/p>\n<p>Benson scored twice, and\u00a0Zucker and Ryan McLeod each had a goal and an assist. Buffalo has won two in a row.<\/p>\n<p>Alexis\u00a0Lafreniere scored twice, Adam Fox had a goal and an assist, and Igor Shesterkin made 22 saves for the Rangers (33-37-9), who were already eliminated from playoff contention.<\/p>\n<p>McLeod gave the Sabres a 1-0 lead 4:40 into the first period when he scored on a wide-open shot from the right face-off circle.<\/p>\n<p>Benson made it 2-0 Buffalo at 8:58 when\u00a0Rasmus Dahlin&#8217;s shot from the right point ricochetted off him and into the net.<\/p>\n<p>Lafreniere scored his first goal on the power play at 19:21 to cut the Sabres&#8217; lead to 2-1.<\/p>\n<p>He scored again at 2:57 of the second period, beating\u00a0Luukkonen on a breakaway to make it 2-2.<\/p>\n<p>Fox scored a power-play goal with a point shot through\u00a0Lafreniere&#8217;s netfront screen to give New York a 3-2 lead at 14:44 of the second.<\/p>\n<p>The Rangers killed a pair of overlapping penalties, including 56 seconds of a 5-on-3 power play for the Sabres, to maintain the one-goal lead going into the third.<\/p>\n<p>But\u00a0Tuch evened it at 3-3 at 5:51 of the third period with a deflection of Peyton Krebs\u2019 shot from the point.<\/p>\n<p>Zucker gave Buffalo a 4-3 lead at 7:14 by collecting a rebound of McLeod&#8217;s shot from the left point and tucking the puck around Shesterkin&#8217;s outstretched left pad.<\/p>\n<p>Benson&#8217;s empty-net goal at 18:45 made it 5-3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buffalo was in a three-way tie for first with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Montreal Canadiens entering the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-190395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-city-news","12":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}