Sabres beat Canadiens in Game 1 behind strength of power play - ESPN

BUFFALO — It took the Buffalo Sabres 14 years to get back to the NHL playoffs — and they've finally brought their power play along with them.

Buffalo defeated Montreal 4-2 in Game 1 of their second-round Eastern Conference playoff series Wednesday with a multigoal showing with the extra man the likes of which the Sabres haven't been able to produce since the last time they tallied two power-play markers on March 31.

Since March, the Sabres went 0-20 on the man advantage to finish the regular season and were an astonishingly poor 1-for-24 on the power play in their first-round series against Boston. Quite frankly, Buffalo was sick of hearing about its dismal special teams performance.

«I mean, that's part of it, right?» Josh Doan said of changing the narrative. «It's one [goal] in the series that's over, and we have two in this series already. So, it's going well. And obviously it was hit-or-miss throughout the end of year, and tonight was one of those nights where we had to get more pucks back in retrievals. We were losing too many battles and too many easy ones and one-and-dones, but credit to [our guys] for pulling through.»

Buffalo controlled Game 1 from the jump, and Doan was a key part of that. He spotted the Sabres a 1-0 lead early in the first period, and Ryan McLeod extended it to 2-0 with Buffalo's first power-play goal midway through the frame (which Doan assisted on).

Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki's marker with the extra skater got his team on the board with less than a minute to go in the opening frame, but the Sabres quickly restored their multigoal lead when Jordan Greenway lit the lamp 3½ minutes into the second.

Bowen Byram registered his fourth goal of the postseason on Buffalo's power play attempt in