The 2022-23 NHL season continued to belong to the Buffalo Sabres' Tage "TNT" Thompson, as he proved his skill with the NHL's 63rd 5-goal game, including a tying NHL record 4 goals in the first period in Buffalo's 9-4 beatdown of the Columbus Blue Jackets Wednesday night at Nationwide Arena.
I don't think they were on the Jackets' side that night. Thompson is the first player since the Sharks' Timo Meier this past January with 5 goals in one game and the first to have 4 in a period since Patrick Marleau during the 2016-17 season. Marleau also played for the Sharks when he did that. Lol.
Alex Tuch added a goal and 3 assists while Rasmus Dahlin picked up a goal and a pair of helpers for the Sabres alongside Thompson. Buffalo opened the floodgates early, with 6 unanswered goals by the end of the opening 20 minutes. Most of those were scored by Thompson at 5:32, his 17th of the season, 7:50 (18), 12:22 on the power play (19), and 16:40 (20), again on the power play. He would also add 1 additional goal in the 2nd period at 16:07 for his 21st of the season. The other goalscorers in the opening period were Dylan Cozens at 3:21 on the power play and Rasmus Dahlin (9) at 7:28.
Patrick Laine finally opened the Columbus scoresheet at 10:49 of the 2nd period with his 5th goal of 2021-22. He would later add his 6th at 4:47 of period 3. Oddly enough, his teammate Gustav Nyquist would do the same thing, his first goal of the night at 12:04 in period 2 for his 5th of 2022-23 and then his 6th of the season at 15:49 of period 3, which would be the last puck in the cage on the night. How about those odds? Buffalo added a pair of goals by Peyton Krebs (1) at 17:19 and Alex Tuch (13) at 19:16 for the Sabres' final tallies of the game. They had no 3rd-period goals.
Buffalo outshot the Jackets 30-24 while getting outhit 25-8, losing more faceoffs 31-21, and racking up less total PIM than Columbus 22-6. That's the one team you want to lead in, by the way. Their next contest sees them travel back home to the Northeast Queen City to face the Penguins on December 9 at 7 pm. Columbus, meanwhile, heads way west and across the Canadian border to face Calgary on the same day and at the same puck drop time.
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