UNBELIEVABLE:Matthews who scored his 60th goal for leafs just announces his.
NEW YORK, BUFFALO (AP) — In front of a very boisterous road crowd supported by the Maple Leafs, Toronto defeated the Buffalo Sabres 3-0 on Saturday night. Auston Matthews scored his NHL-leading 60th goal, while Ilya Samsonov stopped 34 shots.
In his 1,100th NHL game, captain John Tavares scored the first goal. Nicholas Robertson also scored, assisting the Maple Leafs in keeping their third-place standing in the Atlantic Division.
With 5:37 remaining, Matthews capped the scoring to become the first 60-goal scorer in the league for two consecutive seasons in thirty years. “MVP! MVP!” cries erupted from the stands as Matthews equaled the team record he established while leading the NHL two years prior.
The 26-year-old Arizonan is the first player to have successive 60-goal seasons in the NHL since Pavel Bure’s back-to-back 1992–93 and 1993–94 campaigns with the Vancouver Canucks. Bure is one of eight players to have achieved this feat.
In his first game back after giving up four goals on nine shots in a 6-2 defeat to Ottawa on Wednesday, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen of Buffalo made 19 stops.
The Sabres resumed their run of unreliable play that has them falling out of contention and in danger of extending the team’s NHL-record playoff drought to a 13th consecutive season, the night after they overcame a 2-0 deficit to win 5-2 over New Jersey.
Midway through the third period, Samsonov recorded his third shutout of the year and his 13th career, which he complemented with a number of crucial stops.
With 10:28 left, he first used his left pad to thwart Dylan Cozens’ effort at a short-handed breakaway. When he lunged to stop Jeff Skinner on a breakaway a little over a minute later, the fans of the Leafs sang “Sammy!” as Samsonov, lying face down in his crease, got his glove up to get a piece of Cozens’ attempt to convert the rebound.
