The Sabres earned it — the game and the expected-goals battle both.
Buffalo's 5-3 win understates how thoroughly they dominated. The Sabres controlled 68% of expected goals at 5-on-5 (4.53–2.18), yet got outshot on volume—New York held 43% of shot attempts. The Rangers were dangerous with limited chances, scoring at a clip their underlying numbers can't sustain.
The quality gap was stark. Buffalo generated 0.087 expected goals per shot; New York managed 0.041. That's a 2-to-1 ratio—Buffalo's looks were more than twice as threatening. The Sabres piled up 9 high-danger chances to New York's 3, and when the puck got loose in transition, both teams' rush offense hummed: 3 goals apiece on 20 rush chances. But New York's power play tilted the expected-goals math. On 7 PP shots, they scored twice—0.33 expected goals worth of danger converted at a rate that won't repeat.
Where the score almost ran away with the narrative: New York outperformed expected goals by 0.53 at even strength (Shesterkin: 22/26, 0.846 SV%, +0.53), while Buffalo underperformed by 0.82 (Luukkonen: 17/20, 0.850 SV%, -0.82). Shesterkin made saves. Luukkonen didn't, at least not enough. Buffalo's domination in shot creation—quality, volume per chance, and high-danger conversion—overcame goaltending variance and left New York with no pathway to a second win.
The Sabres' turning point came early in the third: Zach Benson's wrist shot from the slot at 18:45 of P3 shifted the game's trajectory. From that moment, the expected-goals gap was insurmountable.