Casey Mittelstadt netted two goals in Buffalo’s four-goal third period, Devon Levi made 32 saves, and the Sabres rallied to defeat the Vegas Golden Knights 5-2 on Friday night.
Zach Benson and former Golden Knight Alex Tuch also scored for Buffalo in the third, while Dylan Cozens scored in the first period and added two assists.
Mittelstadt tied the game at 2-2 at 5:01 of the third period. Benson put Buffalo ahead at 9:29, then assisted Tuch’s goal with 8:48 left. Mittelstadt capped the scoring with an empty-net goal, 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 said. “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 memorable first trip to Las Vegas.
“I think we were all excited for this game,” Levi said. “Personally, being able to go against last year’s Cup champs is pretty special. I think everyone wants to beat them; it’s a great team on the other side of the ice.
“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 now won three of its last four meetings with the Golden Knights, including two consecutive victories in Las Vegas.
“It was a big challenge tonight going against the defending Cup champs,” Cozens said. “We talked about it before, and it would 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 extended his points streak to nine games.
Buffalo, 10-1-1 when scoring first, got on the board immediately after a power play. Cozens skated into the slot and sniped a shot past Thompson to give the Sabres the lead at 7:42 of the first.
The lead didn’t last long, as Barbashev skated in and cleaned things up with a flood of traffic in front of Levi. Eichel gave the Knights a 2-1 lead early in the third period when he grabbed a rebound from Paul Cotter’s miss and fired it past Levi.
Buffalo responded immediately, with Mittelstadt beating Thompson with a shot from the right circle.
“We had a ton of great looks early,” Vegas captain Mark Stone said. “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 night.
- Golden Knights: Host Ottawa on Sunday night.