"There was one team that looked like they are getting close to making the playoffs and preparing to play in the postseason and the one team looked like they weren't," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "Take that from there which team was which."
Chad Johnson made 21 saves, and Evan Rodrigues scored for the Sabres (20-33-11), who are 3-1-0 in their past four games.
"We got the result we deserved tonight," Johnson said. "I thought we played a really good game. We hit a lot of posts and had some opportunities, so it was nice to get that win in overtime."
Rodrigues tied the game 1-1 with 8:13 left in the third period with a wrist shot through a screen.
"I think we [had] all 20 guys pulling in the right direction," Rodrigues said. "We didn't have anyone cheating on the wrong side of the puck. We stuck with our game plan. As the game wore [on], we didn't try cheating for offense. We all stuck to the defensive side of the puck, and when you do that you wear the other team down and you get rewarded."
Conacher gave the Lightning a 1-0 lead at 18:03 of the first period. He controlled the rebound of a shot by Dan Girardi and chipped the puck on the follow up.
"We tried to create some energy by mixing things up there, but I don't know exactly what our problem was tonight," Conacher said. "We probably were not supporting each other enough like we should. We weren't as predictable as we were against the [Maple] Leafs (in a 4-3 shootout win Monday) and the emotions weren't there as well."
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 32 saves for Tampa Bay.
