Short-handed Thrashers fall to Sabres in overtime

By Chris Vivlamore

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

One penalty in overtime was bad. A second was costly.

Buffalo’s Derek Roy scored a power-play goal 2:27 into overtime to give the Sabres a 2-1 victory over the Thrashers on Thursday night at Philips Arena.

The Thrashers skated at a man down for 2:46 of the final 3:37 of the game, including 1:36 of the extra period.

Roy scored the game-winner after Thrashers defenseman Zach Bogosian was called for elbowing behind the Thrashers' net 1:41 into the overtime.

“I really don’t know,” Bogosian said. “It all happened so fast ... I really don’t know. I’m not the ref. I don’t make the calls.”

The Thrashers spent the final 1:10 of the third period and first 50 seconds of the extra period a man down after a holding penalty on defenseman Christoph Schubert. The Sabres had all six shots on goal in the overtime.

“It makes it tough when you are short-handed the first three minutes of overtime,” Thrashers coach John Anderson said. “Eventually they are going to get one or two good scoring chances. That’s what happened.”

Roy took a pass out in front of the net and fired a shot that beat Thrashers goaltender Ondrej Pavelec to the glove side. Pavelec stopped 30 of 32 shots. The Thrashers held a 27-13 shots-on-goal advantage through two periods, but the Sabres led 19-6 the rest of the way.

“It was a good shot,” Pavelec said of Roy’s game-winner. “That’s all I can say. We killed off one [penalty] and another comes right away. ... I think we played a great game. We had a lot of chances. It was 1-1 after 60 minutes, and then they have those two power plays.”

Buffalo (29-11-5, 63 points) snapped a five-game winless streak at Philips Arena. The Sabres last won in Atlanta on Feb. 6, 2007. They trail only the Devils in the Eastern Conference standings.

Ryan Miller, who will play for the United States in the 2010 Winter Olympics, stopped 32 of 33 shots. He leads the NHL with a .936 save percentage.

The Thrashers (20-19-7, 47 points) remain in 11th place in the Eastern Conference after picking up a point. They are three points behind the Senators and Canadiens, tied for the seventh/eighth spot.

“If you look at the two teams and who could afford [to lose] the [extra] point most, it wasn’t us,” Anderson said. “We need every point we can get right now. It would have been great, but you are really pushing the envelope when you are short-handed that long.

The teams entered the extra period tied 1-1 after trading second-period goals.

Ilya Kovalchuk tied the game with a power-play goal with 3:18 remaining. He took control of the puck, skated in on Miller and fired a shot into the top right corner. It was his 27th goal of the season.

Slava Kozlov and Tobias Enstrom assisted on the goal. The point was the 107th of Enstrom’s career, tying Yannick Tremblay’s franchise record for points by a defenseman.

The Sabres opened the scoring, getting the benefit of a big bounce off the boards.

Patrick Kaleta banged in a puck past Pavelec after it caromed off the boards behind the net. Toni Lydman missed wide with the shot, but there was little Pavelec could do when the puck came back out in front and onto Kaleta’s stick. It was his seventh goal of the season.

The Thrashers finished 2-1-1 on a four-game homestand after going winless in nine games (0-6-3). The Thrashers travel to Carolina to play the Hurricanes on Saturday, starting a run of five games against teams below them in the standings.

“Coming off a big game against Ottawa [a 6-1 win Tuesday] and everything was going right, and it carried over into this game," Thrashers forward Chris Thorburn said. "We can’t be disappointed by our effort, but it’s frustrating. ... They made good on their last power-play opportunity."