*Photo from the Buffalo News*
The Buffalo Sabres are simply not in the business of winning hockey games. Certainly not this season. It was just another nightmare for them on Monday, this time at the hands of the Philadelphia Flyers. Kevin Hayes scored, Ivan Provorov added the winner, and the Flyers topped the Buffalo Sabres by a 4-3 score on Monday night in overtime.
Henri Jokiharju started the scoring for Buffalo 17:41 into the first period, giving the Sabres a 1-0 lead. In the second period, Cody Eakin and Brandon Montour scored for Buffalo to extend their lead to 3-0. Then, everything fell apart in the 3rd. Hayes got it started just 1:50 into the period, then Claude Giroux made it 3-2 Sabres 10 minutes later. With 1:29 left in the game, Sean Couturier scored to tie things up for the Flyers. In OT, Provorov scored just 42 seconds in to seal the comeback win.
Provorov said of the late comeback that "Honestly, I'm not sure why it keeps happening where we fall behind early, don't have a good start and only start playing when we're behind. I don't know, I guess maybe coming for the next game, coming out we should think that we're down 3-0 and maybe then we'll have a good start."
Brian Elliott started in net for the Flyers, picking up the win in this one. Elliott stopped 29 shots out of 32 in the comeback win. Elliott improved to 9-4-1 this season with the victory, while the Flyers sit in 5th place in the East Division, with a 17-13-4 record.
Hayes said of the comeback that "I truly believe that every player that puts on this uniform works as hard as he can. It's an honor to play in this league and play for this organization. When things aren't going your way, you've got to stick to your work ethic, and I thought today we had a chance to kind of go into a little shell and start blaming others, and that's the opposite of what we did. And ultimately it came down to hard work, and we came out on top."
On the other side, Linus Ullmark took the loss for the Sabres in another tough defeat, stopping 32 out of 36 shots in this one. This is another loss in a very long string of them, as the Sabres have now lost a whopping 18 straight games, last in the NHL by a country mile. Ullmark's record falls to 5-5-3 this season, while the Sabres possess a measly 6-23-5 record.
Montour said of the losing streak that there is "Not really any words, to be honest. You go through a stretch like this, you can blame the system, blame coaches, blame other lines, you blame all those things, but I think in the end, you've got to be an NHL player. You go up 3-0 like that, especially as desperate as we are to just get two points, it's embarrassing."
The Flyers and Sabres face off again on Wednesday night, with Elliott expected to start for the Flyers, and Ullmark expected to start for Buffalo.
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