Sabres save season with epic rally into 8-3 blowout to force Game 7 vs. Canadiens

Sabres save season with epic rally into 8-3 blowout to force Game 7 vs. Canadiens originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

For a lesser team, this would've been how you'd begin the final chapter. Three goals allowed on three shots, a nightmare beginning that would be the final nail in the coffin.

Not for these Buffalo Sabres. Not in a storybook season like this one. This would not be their final chapter.

Instead, from that horrific start, the Sabres found themselves once again. They stormed back, took the lead and pulled far away.

It was 1-0 Buffalo, then 3-1 Montreal, then 5-3 Sabres — en route to a dominant, 8-3 victory to extend the Sabres' season on Saturday night.

This was Game 6, a potential closeout game for Montreal in front of their home fans in French Canada.

Buffalo kept the door open, though. The Sabres are heading back to Western New York for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals in what promises to be the most epic hockey game seen in those parts in two decades.

To get there, the Sabres needed everything they had.

Rasmus Dahlin scored a slicing, individually brilliant goal after just 32 seconds. It looked like Buffalo's night for that briefest of moments before the Canadiens went three shots, three goals to chase Buffalo goalie Alex Lyon.

A power play goal by Jason Zucker started the stabilizing for Buffalo late in the first period.

Zach Benson tied it with a slick backhand finish early in the second.

Then it was Jack Quinn on the power play, and Konsta Helenius shortly after at even strength, and so Buffalo's massive advantage in shots turned into an advantage on the scoreboard, too.

Quinn provided the dagger with 10 minutes to play, a 6-3 lead and a chance for the KeyBank Center workers to start planning for Monday night's Game 7. Tage Thompson punctuated it with a long-range empty-net goal before Zach Metsa added the eighth goal in his playoff debut as the final tally.

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And as far as the hosts who will be on the ice for Game 7? They've been getting ready for this moment for a long time.

There were the lean years, lots of them, when guys like Dahlin and Thompson experienced more losing than they ever had in their lives.

There were the echoes early this season, when the last-place Sabres in early December looked like they'd be just another iteration of the same old story of late for Buffalo hockey.

But then all of those moments, those stanzas rolling into pages that became chapter after chapter of growth — they've led to this.

The Sabres are going back home, not with their season over but instead to play the kind of hockey game you dream about as a youngster first lacing up your skates.

Game 7, the two best words in sports, coming to Buffalo, N.Y.