Ullmark makes 40 saves, Sabres shut out Ducks

BUFFALO -- Linus Ullmark made 40 saves for his second NHL shutout in the Buffalo Sabres' 3-0 win against the Anaheim Ducks at KeyBank Center on Saturday.

Rasmus Dahlin, Jeff Skinner and Conor Sheary scored for Buffalo (21-11-5), which has yet to lose three straight in regulation this season.
"They had shots on net, but there were no breakaways or 2-on-1s," Ullmark said. "Those are the things that they're really good at.
"They're a 5-on-5 team. We minimized all their chances and obviously it's a big goal for us when we got] that second one [from Skinner] because they had their push and we kind of killed it off."
***[WATCH: [All Ducks vs. Sabres highlights]*
John Gibson made 30 saves for the Ducks (19-14-5), who lost their third straight after winning the first two on their five-game road trip.
"We've got lots of areas in which we can improve on for sure," Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle said. "We'll go back to work. … We can exhale a little bit from this five-game road trip. [It's] never easy playing on the road for 10 days here; it's been tiresome at times. But that's what we do and we'll move on."

Dahlin gave the Sabres a 1-0 lead with a power-play goal at 16:51 of the first period. He took a pass from Rasmus Ristolainen in the right face-off circle and shot it into the top corner of the net.
The No. 1 pick in the 2018 NHL Draft, it was Dahlin's first goal in Buffalo. He has 20 points in 37 games.
"I've been waiting for it," Dahlin said. "It was a great feeling. I've never scored in front of these kinds of fans. It was good that the first one was in a win."
After the Ducks failed to tie the game during two power plays early in the third, Skinner's 26th goal of the season made it 2-0 at 11:12 when he beat Gibson with a backhand shot to the short side.
"That was a really important goal because they were trying to make a push there and we found a way," Sabres coach Phil Housley said. "We may have only gotten three shots (in the period), but we made them count."
Sheary scored an empty-net goal at 18:02 for the 3-0 final.

They said it

"You have peaks and valleys throughout the year. It's about maintaining a style of play and the last two games, I didn't think we maintained that style of play. I don't know if we ran out of gas or what we did, but we didn't play effectively enough to win hockey games." -- Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf
"I really liked our first two periods. I liked our start on a tough schedule, having plane trouble the night before, getting in very late and a quick turnaround for our guys. They found a way to gain some energy. Especially at the start, I really liked our shot mentality." -- Sabres coach Phil Housley

Need to know

Ullmark became the first Sabres goaltender to have at least 40 saves in a shutout since Chad Johnson (44 saves) on Dec. 17, 2015, also against the Ducks. … Jack Eichel had two assists, tying an NHL career-high with his 18th multipoint game and equaling Colorado Avalanche forwards Mikko Rantanen and Nathan MacKinnon for the most in the NHL this season.

What's next

Ducks: At the San Jose Sharks on Thursday (10:30 p.m. ET; NBCSCA, PRIME, NHL.TV)
Sabres: At the St. Louis Blues on Thursday (8 p.m. ET, FS-MW, MSG-B, NHL.TV)