Rasmus Dahlin is a famous hockey player who was drafted by the Buffalo Sabres in 2018. This season, he has gone above and beyond to help the Sabres stay in the playoff race. During their game this weekend against the Carolina Hurricanes, he scored one goal, set up two more goals, and blocked an important shot that led to Tage Thompson scoring the go-ahead goal and ultimately winning them the game 4-3!
“I did my best and tried my hardest to do well in the game”, said Dahlin. He’s just the second Sabres defenseman ever to have achieved over 70 points for one season. Phil Housley is the only other person who has managed to get over 70 points three times during his career in Buffalo, including an 81-point season in 1989-90!
Casey Mittelstadt scored twice, which helped the Buffalo Sabres win and keeps their chances to make the playoffs alive. If they lost, it would have ended their chance completely, and made 12 seasons without making it into the playoffs – an NHL record.
Devon Levi, who recently joined the Buffalo Sabres after completing his college season for Northeastern, stopped 32 shots. That helped the Sabers win 39 out of their games this season, which is their best result since 2011-12! Sebastian Aho scored his 35th goal to help the Carolina Hurricanes, and Seth Jarvis and Jesper Fast also both scored goals too.
Antii Raanta made 26 saves in a game and lost for only the third time this season. He had an impressive streak of 15 games without a regulation loss, which was an NHL record since 1996-97.
On that day, the Hurricanes did not earn any points either and stood at the first place of Metropolitan Division but were just 1 point ahead of New Jersey. They had won 3 out of their 8 last games.
Carolina hasn’t done very well when it comes to scoring points. It has been 15 games since they scored more than 4 goals in one game, and they have been shut out (not scoring any goals) four times during those 15 matches.
The Hurricanes coach, Rod Brind’Amour, said we are really struggling to score goals at the moment. We had lots of chances to score but didn’t take them and instead the other team got a goal from us missing that chance. That’s how the game changed – our mistake basically made it so we lost.
In Buffalo’s game, they trailed 2-1 when Jarvis and Fast scored shortly after each other in the last 6 minutes of the first period, and then fell further behind 3-2 to Aho’s goal during the second period. However, after Dahlin raced back to block Necas’ chance to score an open side goal for the left net, Thompson managed to score a one-timer from the slot which reversed all odds and secured Buffalo a victorious 4-3 lead.
Dahlin did something fancy to help Mittelstadt score the third goal and tie the game with 1:42 left in the second period. Power passed him the ball from the left point, then Dahlin maneuvered around two other players (Jack Drury and Paul Stastny) before he sent a backhand pass to Mittelstadt who quickly scored into an open gap in the left side. His teammates were so impressed that Mittelstadt asked Dahlin to lead everyone back to Buffalo’s bench for their victory celebration!
Mittelstadt said that he had done something really special tonight, and probably should have gotten praised twice for it.
Next up, the Hurricanes will be playing in Ottawa against the Senators on Monday night, and the Sabres will be playing against the Rangers on Monday night too.
