Okposo scores in 3rd, Sabres shut out Islanders

ELMONT, N.Y. --Kyle Okposo scored in the third period, and Eric Comrie made 26 saves for the Buffalo Sabres in a 2-0 win against the New York Islanders at UBS Arena on Saturday.

It was Comrie's first shutout of the season and second in the NHL.
Jeff Skinner also scored for Buffalo (35-31-6), which has won two straight.
The Sabres remained six points behind the Pittsburgh Penguins, who have one game in hand, for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Eastern Conference.
"If you start thinking about where you're at in the standings and playing, you're not going to play well," said Okposo, the Buffalo captain. "There's going to be too much anxiety. You're not going to make the plays that you normally do. You have to stay in the moment and trust that the process will take care of itself. Because if you do all the right things, [more] likely than not, you're going to end up with the right result [on] the scoreboard. And I think that's a very important lesson that we're trying to learn right now."

Semyon Varlamov made 33 saves in his first start in two weeks for New York (37-28-9), which was coming off a 5-4 overtime loss at the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday.
The Islanders are one point ahead of the Penguins, who have one game in hand, for the first wild card from the East.
"It's hard," New York defenseman Scott Mayfield said. "There's going to be games like that, and [we've] just got to regroup and get the next one."
Okposo gave the Sabres a 1-0 at 13:31 of the third. Ilya Lyubushkin's shot from the right point deflected off Islanders forward Anders Lee to the left circle, where Okposo scored off the near post.
"The work ethic [Okposo] puts in here, [we're] pretty excited every time he scores," Buffalo coach Don Granato said. "A great play by [Lyubushkin], who does a lot of grunt work. A lot of not limelight type work. So the two of them team up on that play, it was nice to see."

Prior to the goal, Varlamov had made a number of key saves to keep the game scoreless, including stopping Dylan Cozens on a breakaway at 1:13 of the third. He denied Cozens at 6:57 of the first period when he got across his crease to make a pad save on the forward's one-timer on a 2-on-1.
"Our goalies are always good," Mayfield said. "You see it every night with them. So we [have] to put up a better effort for him there, and we just didn't have it tonight."

Skinner scored into an empty net with 32 seconds remaining for the 2-0 final.
"It was a very mature game I thought from us," Okposo said. "We haven't always done that this year. You know we're the youngest team in the League. …We played the game that needed to be played today. We didn't get frustrated. We just continued to play our game. We didn't get sucked into trying to make too many plays or taking things that weren't there. That's obviously a very frustrating team to play against. They know how to win, they know how to lock it down, and we just did a pretty good job staying patient a lot today."