This was a weird game.
The Sabres were the better team for most of the night but the Lightning put together short stretches of dominance where they ran Buffalo out of the rink for minutes at a time. They had one of those stretches to start the game including a goal 13 seconds into the game by NIkita Kucherov. They had another in the second period when Yanni Gourde scored the go ahead goal and then Tyler Johnson nearly followed it up with another. And the last of those stretches came in the third period where they scored two shorthanded goals (Cedric Paquette and Ondrej Palat) during the same penalty kill and then Anthony Cirelli had a goal at 5v5 waived off for goalie interference.