With a 9-7-4 record, the Oilers now look ahead to their meeting at KeyBank Center with the Sabres, who showed desperation coming back from a three-goal deficit to the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday to come away with a 5-4 overtime win that Mattias Samuelsson capped off at three-on-three.
“We’ve been losing a lot of games, and it’s frustrating, and we know no one’s gonna sit there and feel sorry for us,” Tage Thompson said. “I think we just tried to impose our will there and knew that if we got one early, put them on their heels a little bit, we could get some momentum rolling. And we did.”
Detroit scored three times in five minutes of the second period to take a 4-1 lead, but the Sabres rallied from three goals down for the first time since November 2018 for a much-needed win after losing five games in a row, scoring twice in the third that included a shorthanded equalizer from Ryan McLeod.
Defenceman Rasmus Dahlin had been personal leave in Sweden and returned on Saturday to skate a team-high 25:38 with two assists, and the Sabres were desperately missing their captain’s presence and impact from the blueline.
“It’s a big loss when our captain and our best player is out of the lineup,” Thompson said. “He’s an impact player, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence we got the job done tonight with him.”
