At The Final Horn: Capitals 6 - Sabres 4

After an intense two weeks of training camp, the Buffalo Sabres hit the ice against the Washington Capitals on Thursday for their first game of the 2020-21 season - and their first since March 9 of last year.
In the first of a two-game set at KeyBank Center, the Capitals skated away with a 6-4 victory.
Taylor Hall, Tobias Rieder, Jake McCabe and Victor Olofsson scored for Buffalo while Washington's top line of Alex Ovechkin (0+2), Nicklas Backstrom (1+1) and T.J. Oshie (1+2) along with defenseman John Carlson (1+1) found their way onto the scoresheet with multi-point efforts.
Sabres captain Jack Eichel picked up a pair of assists. He recorded 20 multi-point games last season. McCabe, Hall and Olofsson had two-point nights as well, as each recorded a goal and an assist.
Carter Hutton made 22 saves while Ilya Samsonov also stopped 22 shots for Washington.

What happened

Washington got on the board early when Backstrom tallied 5:43 into the contest.
Hall made his presence known right away, scoring his first as a member of the Sabres 8:48 into the opening period on the power play to tie the game.
Oshie scored at the 10:33 mark on the man advantage and then at the 7:05 mark of the second period, Carlson skated in alone to make it 4-1.
Rieder cut the lead in half on a wraparound goal with 1:14 remaining in the second. The goal was also his first as a Sabre after signing as a free agent in the offseason.
With those goals from Hall and Rieder, Buffalo has now had a newly acquired player score in six of their last 10 season-openers: Hall, Jason Pominville, Eichel, Zemgus Girgensons, Steve Ott and Ville Leino.
Each scored on his first shot, except for Eichel, who scored on his second, and Rieder, who scored on his third.
Buffalo got off to a very fast start in the third period when McCabe scored 20 seconds in, but the Capitals responded on the next shift to regain their two-goal lead on tally from Jakub Vrana.
Olofsson got Buffalo within one when he roofed a shot over Ilya Samsonov with 1:54 to play.
With 1:03 left, Garnet Hathaway put one into Buffalo's empty net.

The big takeaway

Buffalo starts the season 0-1-0 and while some of new additions made an impact on the scoresheet, the firepower of Washington's veterans proved to be too much.
Washington scored one on the power play and the other five at even strength with, as mentioned, their top line proving to be tough to contain.
With 9:56 remaining in the third period, newly acquired center Eric Staal left the game after being hit in the head by Capitals center Nic Dowd.

Roll the highlight film

We'll go split screen for this one.
Here's Hall's first:

And before the game, local frontline workers introduced the opening night roster:

Worthy of a mention

Dylan Cozens, Buffalo's first-round pick in 2019, made his NHL debut and recorded his first NHL point - a primary assist - on Rieder's goal.

Up next

The Sabres and Capitals will go at it again tomorrow night. Faceoff is set for 7 p.m. but coverage begins with the pregame show at 6:30 on MSG.