Trending: Wings fall to red-hot Sabres in shootout, 3-2

DETROIT -- The Red Wings forced it past regulation but could not put an end to the Buffalo Sabres' winning streak.
The Sabres got shootout goals from Tage Thompson and Sam Reinhart to earn their ninth straight victory, 3-2, at Little Caesars Arena Saturday night.

Andreas Athanasiou scored the lone shootout goal for the Wings.
Both teams were playing the second of back-to-back games.
In regulation, Dylan Larkin and Anthony Mantha scored for the Wings while Jeff Skinner (power play) and Thompson (power play) scored for the Sabres.
Skinner briefly held the league lead with 18 goals until Winnipeg's Patrik Laine scored five goals against the St. Louis Blues to take over the lead at 19.
Detroit goaltender Jimmy Howard (7-6-3) had 33 saves while Buffalo goalie Linus Ullmark (5-0-1) had 35 saves.
The Wings fell to 10-10-3 and the Sabres improved to 16-6-2.
Up next for the Wings is a home date with the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday. The Sabres return home to host the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday.
1. Jimmy Howard: Heading into Saturday's game versus the Red Wings, the Sabres were an astounding 10-0-2 when they scored the first goal. Against the Wings, a power-play tally at 3:37 of the first by Skinner gave Buffalo a 1-0 lead after one. The Sabres had 17 first-period shots with many of them high caliber scoring chances. But as he has done for most of the season, Howard stood tall in net. The upstate New York native always seems to excel against teams from the Empire State. Even after the shootout loss, Howard's career numbers against Buffalo are impressive - he's 10-1-3 with a 1.63 goals-against average, a .938 save percentage with one shutout. On Saturday he stopped 33 of the 35 shots he faced for a .943 save percentage. Over his last eight starts, Howard is 6-1-1 with a 2.07 goals-against average and a .937 save percentage. Overall, Howard is 7-6-3 with a 2.55 goals-against average and a .925 save percentage. Blashill has said the Red Wings need excellent goaltending to keep them in games when they start slowly. On Saturday Howard did exactly that, giving his team a chance to win.
Quotable: "It was pretty good, we had opportunities and Ullmark came up big for them. They've got swag to them, they're out there playing hounding the puck, they're on top of you, so it's a lot different compared to last year. They do a really good job on the power play as we saw earlier on, (Jack) Eichel shooting it up top and they try to outnumber you at the net." -- Howard
Quotable II: "I think we just keep grinding. There's no giving up, we know that we're in every game. Howie gives us a chance to win every night, both our goalies do. That part and we find a way. Sure, our power play wasn't great, it didn't look great, but we still find a way to get one. Big one there at the end." -- Niklas Kronwall

2. Dylan Larkin: One day after leading the Wings in ice time with 23:23 in Washington, Larkin was at it again at home against the Sabres. With his team trailing 1-0, Larkin sped into the offensive zone and fired the puck from the outer edge off the left circle past Ullmark 53 seconds into the second period. Anthony Mantha and Justin Abdelkader assisted. It was Larkin's ninth goal of the season, moving him into second behind Athanasiou's 10. Larkin becomes the first Wing to reach 20 points this season. In 14 career games against the Sabres, Larkin has five goals and four assists. When the game went into overtime, Larkin ended up taking a holding penalty to prevent his former U.S. National Team Development Program teammate Eichel from getting a scoring chance. The penalty kill managed to keep the Sabres from scoring. In the shootout, Larkin was the fourth shooter but was unable to score. Larkin finished with 26 shifts for 23:07, most among the forwards and second only to Danny DeKeyser's 24:41. Larkin had a career-high 10 shots, a hit, two takeaways, was plus-2 and was 14-for-24 in face-offs.

Quotable: "I think they had a good start. It was a great game I thought. I don't think there was a turning point. Just a good hockey game. It was a fast game. They really impressed me with their team speed. They played fast and their D were active and their big line was pretty good. Just back and forth. It was a fun game to be a a part of. I think we had tons of chances we should have capitalized on. Two breakaways and a half breakaway there in overtime. It could've went either way and we're going to look back and I think we deserved better. Good goaltending again by us and it was just a fun game to be a part of." -- Larkin
3. Special teams: The Wings' special teams have not been quite as special as they were earlier in the season. Not too long ago, both Detroit's power play and penalty kill ranked in the top 10. After going 0-for-4 against the Sabres, the power play dropped to 16th in the league at 20 percent. After giving up two power-play goals to the Sabres, the penalty kill fell to 14th in the league at 80.7 percent. However, the Wings did get a goal right after their fourth power play expired when Mantha got a rebound at 13:52 of the third period. The penalty kill also came through in overtime when the Sabres had a 4-on-3 after Larkin was called for holding.

Quotable: "That last power play was the best one, that we ended up scoring on, it was an extension of it, it wasn't a power play goal. I would say definite lack of execution. Probably a little bit lack of won puck battles. On good power plays, you shoot it, you get it back, you shoot it, you get it back. We're shooting and not getting it back, so that's a killer. We got to make sure we do a better job. It hasn't been nearly dangerous enough. Not to say we never create anything. We've had different issues on different nights. Last night we couldn't win any face-offs. Tonight, our entries we're pretty good and then we'd shoot it and not get it back. So we just got to make sure we go to work on that. The hard part is you don't have any practice time, the way the schedule is going to come up here. So our guys got to step up and make some plays." -- Wings coach Jeff Blashill
Quotable II: "I thought again we started slow. We get a power play early in the game and we just didn't execute, we didn't break into the zone. I think we need to come together and come up the ice together and get in the zone and release it high. I think we're rimming the puck too much and we're getting pressured and it's going 200 feet the other way. Later in the game I thought we kicked it back up to our defenseman and they walked the blueline, and then we got to our spots and set up and I don't know if that one Mo scored was a power play goal or not, maybe a couple of seconds after. But that's what we've got to do is get pucks to the net and bodies to the net and score dirty goals." -- Larkin
Quotable III: "We just got to stay tight and we just got to give lanes so I can see the puck and hopefully make the save and we were able to come up with some big blocks there and get some huge clears and I came up with a couple of saves." -- Howard on overtime penalty kill