DETROIT — Sam Reinhart and Tage Thompson scored in a seven-round shootout to give the Buffalo Sabres their ninth consecutive victory, 3-2 over the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday night.
Jeff Skinner and Thompson scored for Buffalo in regulation, and Linus Ullmark made 35 saves.
Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha scored for Detroit, and Jimmy Howard stopped 33 shots. Andreas Athanasiou scored in the shootout for the Red Wings.
Mantha tied it at 2, with 6:28 left in the third. He poked in the rebound off the goal post. It was Mantha’s seventh goal and came four seconds after a Red Wings power play ended.
Thompson gave the Sabres a 2-1 lead 7:40 into the third period with a power-play goal on a one-time slap shot from the left circle. It was Thompson’s third goal.
Larkin tied it at 1, 53 seconds into the second period when his harmless-looking wrist shot from the outside of the left circle along the boards from a bad angle went in off Ullmark. It was Larkin’s ninth goal.
Skinner’s power-play goal 3:37 into the game gave Buffalo a 1-0 lead. He put in the rebound, of a shot by Jack Eichel, from the slot. It was Skinner’s league-leading 18th goal and his fourth in three games.
Ullmark was forced to make an unexpected spectacular reverse pad save when a dump in from the neutral zone took a weird bounce in the left circle and was headed for the empty net as Ullmark came out to play the puck.
NOTE: Buffalo was without C Patrik Berglund because of an upper-body injury. … Detroit was without D Jonathan Ericsson (undisclosed) and Darren Helm (upper body).
UP NEXT:
Buffalo: Hosts San Jose on Tuesday night.
Detroit: Hosts Columbus on Monday night.
___
More AP NHL: https://apnews.com/tag/NHL and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Paul Harris, The Associated Press