"It was a great play by Sammy, he just drove wide and we had 3-on-2 and Ryan did a great job backing the D off," Okposo said. "He made a great pass to me and I had all day, luckily I found a little opening in there."
"We looked like we didn't have a lot of jump and we didn't have a lot of energy for a lot of that game," Bylsma said. "I thought we poured it one there in the last 10 minutes and we kind of outplayed them, out chanced them and it culminated with the play from Sam to Kyle for the fourth goal. I thought we were going to win the game in regulation with the way we were playing."
If Bylsma was confident then, imagine how the coach must have felt while watching his two fastest skaters bust of out of the defensive zone with the puck in the 3-on-3 overtime. As Bylsma noted after the game, the two players chasing Eichel and Kane - Couture and top-line forward Tomas Hertl - aren't slow in their own right, but there are few players who can match Eichel and Kane's speed on the rush.
"No, not at all," Kane said. "That's not being cocky, that's just being honest. I saw him coming around the net I knew just to get to the middle of the ice. He was going to beat his man, I was going to beat mine and he was able to feather one through and I was able to put it away."
On this occasion, Kane might have been going too fast even for his own good. After roofing the game-winner on Eichel's feed, he crashed headfirst into the end boards. He did say he felt fine afterward.
As happy as the Sabres were with the win, there was still a lesson to be learned from the way they played in the third versus the first two periods against one of the League's premier teams. Eichel rattled off the list of things they did well: playing fast on the forecheck, defensemen pinching aggressively down the wall, generating second chances.
"I just think that that's how we need to play for 60 minutes," Eichel said. "If we do that, we'll be a real hard team to beat."