Despite their puck management, the Sabres entered the third period trailing 3-2 thanks to shorthanded goals by Benoit Pouliot and Casey Nelson. That changed after Johan Larsson took a penalty for boarding, which set up a power-play goal from Tyson Jost scored 3:03 into the period. Gabriel Bourque added to Colorado's lead less than four minutes later.
Ryan O'Reilly, already with two assists on the night, scored a 5-on-3 goal later in the period and Evander Kane scored to bring the Sabres within one with 2:52 remaining, but they never closed the gap.
Robin Lehner made 22 saves in the loss.
"We made too many turnovers from the start," O'Reilly said. "We tried to play an east-west game, that's not our style. We had to keep it a little simpler off the bat to get some stuff going and we didn't. We just fed their transition and obviously they got ahead, and it was tough to climb out of it."
It was an uncharacteristic night for Ristolainen, who was involved in turnovers that led to Colorado's second and third goals. The first mistake came with Buffalo on the power play in the first period, when the puck skipped past the defenseman at the blue line and found its way to Matt Nieto, who scored on a shorthanded breakaway.
Early in the second period, Ristolainen was forced into a defensive-zone giveaway by Kerfoot and linemate Gabriel Landeskog, who then found Wilson alone for another breakaway goal. Ristolainen ended up with just 19 seconds of even-strength ice time in the period.
"I don't think the game was going his way, so I just decided to mix up the pairs," Housley said.
"I played bad and that's a coach's decision," Ristolainen added. "Got to respect that."
The Sabres were playing their first full game since news broke that Jack Eichel would be out indefinitely with a high-ankle sprain. Eichel sustained his injury early in their win in Boston on Saturday night, but they were able to overcome his absence because they played a detail-oriented game.
Their goal coming into Sunday's game was to replicate that performance, but they got away from it early and never quite got it back.
"Coming in, we had a little different mindset against Boston when we knew were just going to play a hard game all night and kind of commit," O'Reilly said. "Tonight we got a little lazy. ... It's disappointing because we could have taken that one."