COLUMBUS, Ohio — Rookie Alexandre Texier scored 2:08 into overtime to lift the Columbus Blue Jackets to a 4-3 win over the Buffalo Sabres on Monday night.
Texier beat Linus Ullmark from the right circle off a quick pass from Nick Foligno to give the Blue Jackets their first win of the season.
Victor Olofsson scored for the Sabres, who had pulled the goalie on the power play to create a 6-on-4 advantage, with 1:14 left in the game to tie the score and force the extra period.
Foligno, Oliver Bjorkstrand and Cam Atkinson also scored for the Blue Jackets, who had dropped their first two games of the season by a combined 10-3 score. They outshot Buffalo 44-18.
Joonas Korpisalo had 15 saves for Columbus.
Marcus Johansson and Jeff Skinner also scored for Buffalo and Ullmark, making his first start of the season, had 40 saves.
Bjorkstrand, playing in his 200th NHL game, got his first goal of the season with 1:51 left in the first when he grabbed a carom off the back boards and shot from a sharp angle, bouncing the puck in off Ullmark’s back.
The Blue Jackets struck again quickly when Atkinson – just 9 seconds into a power play – scored from the bottom of the right circle off a sharp behind-the-net feed from Alexander Wennberg.
Early in the second period, it was Buffalo’s turn to capitalize on a power play. Johansson, signed as an unrestricted free agent in the summer, got his first goal with the Sabres on a one-timer from the right circle to cut Columbus’ lead to 2-1.
Skinner tied the score for Buffalo later in the second when he picked Ryan Murray’s pocket in the defensive zone on the Blue Jackets’ transition and rifled a shot past Korpisalo from 30 feet.
Foligno batted in a bouncing puck amid heavy traffic to give Columbus the lead again on a power play 6:46 into the third.
BLUES 3, MAPLE LEAFS 2: Alex Pietrangelo scored the tiebreaking goal in the third period, leading St. Louis to a victory in Toronto.
Oskar Sundqvist and Brayden Schenn also scored for the defending champions, who have earned points in their first three games this season (2-0-1). Jordan Binnington stopped 32 shots.
Frederik Gauthier and William Nylander scored for Toronto, which has dropped two straight (2-1-1). Frederik Andersen finished with 26 saves.
The Blues scored the decisive goal at 7:51 of the third when David Perron found a pinching Pietrangelo, who beat a down-and-out Andersen from a tight angle at the bottom of the faceoff circle for his second of the season. Pietrangelo also earned his 400th career point and 23rd game-winner to break a tie with Al MacInnis for the most by a defenseman in franchise history.
St. Louis had a chance to add to its lead when Toronto defenseman Jake Muzzin went off for slashing with 4:57 left, but the a(;e Leafs had the best chance when Binnington robbed Ilya Mikheyev with his right pad off the rush.
Toronto pressed with Andersen on the bench for the extra skater, but couldn’t find a way past Binnington and the Blues’ stout, battle-tested defense.
NOTES
RANGERS-SENATORS TRADE: New York traded forward Vladislav Namestnikov to Ottawa in exchange for defenseman Nick Ebert a fourth-round pick in the 2021 NHL draft.
The 26-year-old Namestnikov, acquired from Tampa Bay at the 2018 trade deadline as part of the deal that sent Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller to the Lightning, had 13 goals and 22 assists in 99 games with the Rangers. For his career, he has 66 goals and 92 assists in 362 games.
Ebert, 25, has appeared in one game with Belleville of the AHL this season, after totaling 11 goals and 232 assists in 49 games with Orebro of the Swedish Hockey League last season.
Ebert has played in one game with the American Hockey League’s Belleville Senators this season. He played in 49 games with Orebro of the Swedish Hockey League last season, with 11 goals and 22 assists. The 25-year-old native of Livingston, New Jersey, was a seventh-round pick by Los Angeles in the 2012 NHL draft.
The Rangers now have nine picks in the 2021 draft – one in each of the first two rounds, two in each of the next two rounds, and one each in the the last three rounds.
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