Tage Thompson's 5-Point Night Rescues Buffalo in 7-6 Thriller
Tage Thompson scored three goals in a 15-second span late in the second period to turn a one-goal Buffalo lead into a 5-3 cushion, finishing the night with 3 goals and 2 assists. The Sabres needed every bit of it — Anaheim scored three times in the final 13 minutes of the third to make it 7-6 before the clock bailed Buffalo out.
The first period was a mess in the best possible way. Anaheim jumped out 2-0 inside three minutes on goals from Mikael Granlund at 1:57 and Cutter Gauthier at 2:54, with Leo Carlsson picking up assists on both. Buffalo clawed back to 2-1 on Tyson Kozak's first goal of the season, but Anaheim answered 35 seconds later when Roger McQueen snapped home his first of the year to push it back to 3-1. The Sabres refused to fold — Noah Ostlund cut it to 3-2 at 11:39, and Tage Thompson tied it at 3-3 with a wrist shot at 15:32, assisted by Zach Benson and Peyton Krebs. Six goals in the first period, and somehow neither goaltender had blinked off the ice yet.
The second period was quiet until it absolutely wasn't. Thompson struck at 18:36 on a wrist shot to give Buffalo a 4-3 lead, and then — 15 seconds later, at 18:51 — he did it again. Same shot type, different helpers, same result: 5-3 Buffalo. That back-to-back sequence, with Peyton Krebs assisting on both, looks like the moment the game turned for good, even if Anaheim hadn't gotten the memo yet. Thompson's hat trick was complete, and Krebs finished the night with three assists. The story of the second period was Buffalo's top line simply taking over when the game was there to be won.
Buffalo poured it on early in the third — Jack Quinn made it 6-3 at 1:57, assisted by Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin, and Zach Benson pushed it to 7-3 at 6:37. At that point, this looked like a blowout. Then Anaheim remembered it was still a hockey game. Cutter Gauthier scored his second of the night at 7:26, Tristan Luneau made it 7-5 at 18:52, and Beckett Sennecke — who had an assist on Gauthier's first-period goal — scored unassisted at 19:29 to make it a one-goal game with 31 seconds left. Colten Ellis finished with 28 saves on 34 shots, and he needed every one of those final seconds. Ville Husso stopped 23 of 30 for Anaheim in a loss that, frankly, the Ducks probably didn't deserve given how hard they pushed at the end. Carlsson's three-assist night was the lone bright spot in a Anaheim box score that will sting.