Thompson scores again, Sabres top Senators for 5th win in past 6

OTTAWA -- Tage Thompson scored his fifth goal in as many games for the Buffalo Sabres, who completed a season sweep of the Ottawa Senators with a 5-2 win at Canadian Tire Centre on Tuesday.

“Obviously, too little too late this year, but I think we’re learning how to close out games,” Thompson said. “At the beginning of the season you’d see us panic when games meant something, we’d have a lead and kind of blow it, but I think right now there’s no panic on the bench. I think there’s a lot of confidence that we can close games out.”

Rasmus Dahlin and Alex Tuch each had a goal and an assist, and Mattias Samuelsson had two assists for the Sabres (32-36-6), who went 4-0-0 against Ottawa this season. James Reimer made 33 saves for his fifth straight victory.

“We got a little bit loose at the end, like, in maybe the last five minutes, where we got caught on a couple long shifts, but he was there,” Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff said of Reimer. “When we made the early puck mistakes in the first period, you know, turn it over at the blue line and give them a 2-on-1, he made key saves that allowed us to jump off to the lead.”

Claude Giroux and Jake Sanderson scored, and Linus Ullmark made 17 saves for the Senators (39-29-6), who were without captain Brady Tkachuk (upper body).

Ottawa is five points ahead of the Montreal Canadiens for the first wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Eastern Conference.

“Sometimes you play pretty well and you lose,” Senators coach Travis Green said.

The Sabres were 4-for-4 on the penalty kill.

“I think we’re just committing to our game plan,” Buffalo forward Peyton Krebs said of the penalty kill. “They’ve got some good players over there that can make some good plays, and we want to make sure that they don’t have time to do that. [Assistant coach] Marty [Wilford] has been doing a good job of really giving us an identity on the PK and we’re just trying to do our best to get it down the ice.”

Tuch gave the Sabres a 1-0 lead at 8:38 of the first period. Ullmark lost sight of a Samuelsson rebound in the crease and Tuch tapped it in.

“Well, they sure have [given us problems this season],” Green said of Buffalo. “I wish I had the perfect answer, but we haven’t gotten inside enough. It seems like we’ve had a lot of shot attempts, much like tonight. We haven’t done a good job of delivering the puck to the paint. Give them credit, they blocked a lot of shots.”

Dahlin’s one-timer from the left point beat a screened Ullmark over the blocker to make it 2-0 at 11:51.

Thompson pushed it to 3-0 at 12:36 of the second period when he deked Drake Batherson in the slot and finished a give-and-go with JJ Peterka into an open net.

“Honestly, I didn’t really realize I had that much time, but as soon as I got around [Batherson], I heard JJ yelling for it,” Thompson said. “He made a great play back to me. I think they were cheating the pass; Ullmark slid over quite a bit and JJ makes a great little touch pass right back to me.”

Giroux scored on a centering pass from Tyler Kleven to cut the lead to 3-1 at 13:46. Ullmark got the secondary assist on the goal, his first of the season.

“You’re going to have games like that,” Giroux said. “It wasn’t our best game, but we didn’t play that bad. We had our chances.”

Krebs intercepted a cross-ice pass attempt from Dylan Cozens, skated in on a breakaway and beat Ullmark with a wrist shot under the glove to push the lead to 4-1 at 9:59 of the third period.

Sanderson cut it to 4-2 at 10:22 with a wrist shot from the top of the left face-off circle.

“At the end of the day, you don’t want to lose four times to a team in your conference,” Sanderson said. “It’s a tough pill to swallow, for sure.”

Ryan McLeod scored short-handed into an empty net for the 5-2 final at 17:21.

“I think we’re locked in to a better style,” Ruff said. “We’re not giving up the crazy chances, managing the puck has been better. I think, inside the zone, [we’ve been] a lot more aggressive. We’re locked into how we feel we need to finish a game.”

NOTES: Sabres forward Tyson Kozak left midway through the second period and did not return because of a lower-body injury. Ruff did not have an update on his status post-game.