Sabres score five goals in third to rally over Penguins

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Alex Tuch scored with 9:26 left and the Buffalo Sabres had five goals in the third period to rally past the Pittsburgh Penguins 6-3 on Wednesday night.

Victor Oloffson, Tage Thompson, JJ Peterka and Kyle Okposo also scored for Buffalo. Eric Comrie made 18 saves.

“It’s good that we’re able to finish games,” Tuch said. “I think that’s something that we slowly learned last year, that we needed to bear down and not sit back and continue to press and continue to play our style of game. I thought we did that tonight.”

Jason Zucker, Josh Archibald and Jake Guentzel scored for the Penguins, who have lost six straight games. Casey DeSmith made 26 saves.

It’s the longest losing streak for Pittsburgh since it also lost six in a row in February 2020. The Penguins’ latest loss comes after they surrendered a 5-2 lead on Tuesday in Boston before losing 6-5 in overtime.

“We’ve got to find a way to get some swagger back in our game,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “When you go through struggles like this, we’re all human beings, everybody cares and everybody wants to be part of the solution. So we’ve got to go back to work.”

Pittsburgh (4-5-2) had similar difficulties to open last season, opening the year with a record of 5-6-4, before turning things around and finishing with 46 wins.

“It’s not a great feeling and we’ve got to find a way to get out of it,” captain Sidney Crosby said.

Zucker opened the score 6:28 into the first, finishing a 2-on-1 rush with a blast from the right circle after a setup by Evgeni Malkin.

Archibald made it 2-0 5:50 into the second on a similar play to Pittsburgh’s first goal. This time it was Ryan Poehling who set up Archibald’s one-timer from the right circle.

Peterka got the Sabres on the board with 1:09 left in the second on a shot through traffic from behind the right circle. Rasmus Asplund assisted on Peterka’s goal and picked up his fifth point in his last five games.

Guentzel quickly restored Pittsburgh’s two-goal lead at the start of the third period, scoring just eight seconds into the period on a breakaway power-play goal, but it didn’t last. Guentzel was spotted from long range by defenseman Kris Letang and scored on a shot to the blocker side.

Thompson jump-started Buffalo’s comeback 3:21 into the third with a power-play goal. Thompson continued his hot streak after a six-point night against Detroit on Monday.

Oloffson tied the game at 3-3 6:29 into the third on a blast from the right circle, scoring his seventh goal of the season, with Tuch’s game-winner coming four minutes later.

The Penguins pulled DeSmith with 2:14 remaining but Okposo scored an empty-net goal with 1:36 remaining. Oloffson added a second empty-net goal with 6.6 seconds left.

CARTER OUT

Penguins center Jeff Carter did not make the trip to Buffalo after suffering a lower-body injury on Saturday against Seattle. Carter has been considered day to day.

A NEW, OLD LOOK

Both teams debuted their new “reverse retro” jerseys for the first time. Buffalo’s retro jerseys are a color variation of the uniforms they wore from 1996-2006, while the Penguins jerseys are a throwback to the 1990s.

UP NEXT

Penguins: Return home to host Seattle on Saturday.

Sabres: Start a weekend road trip in Carolina on Friday.

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