Sabres vs. Ducks: Tage Thompson's Natural Hat Trick and Five Points Fuel a Wild 7-6 Buffalo Win

Tage Thompson needed 15 seconds late in the second period to turn a tie game into a two-goal cushion, and by the time he was done, a dozen hats were on the Honda Center ice and the Anaheim Ducks were wondering where their 3-1 lead had gone.

Thompson finished with a natural hat trick and two assists, and the Buffalo Sabres outlasted the Ducks 7-6 on Thursday night. Buffalo scored six straight goals after falling behind early, then spent the final minutes clinging to the lead as Anaheim scored twice with its goalie pulled.

Anaheim Jumps Out, Buffalo Answers

The Ducks came out flying. Buffalo handed Anaheim an early 5-on-3, per the Sabres' website, and the Ducks made the visitors pay: Mikael Granlund scored on the power play at 1:57 of the first, and Cutter Gauthier added another power-play goal 57 seconds later. Anaheim led 2-0 before the Sabres had found their skating legs.

Tyson Kozak got Buffalo on the board at 10:03 with his first goal of the season, but the Ducks answered 35 seconds later. Roger McQueen, who made Anaheim's roster out of training camp but had not yet recorded an NHL point, buried a rebound from the slot for his first career goal and a 3-1 lead.

It was also Anaheim's last goal until the third period. Noah Ostlund scored on the power play at 11:39, only Buffalo's fifth power-play goal of the season according to the AP, with Zach Benson and Thompson assisting. Then Thompson tied it at 15:32, finishing a play set up by Benson and Peyton Krebs.

The Turning Point: 15 Seconds of Thompson

The second period belonged to Buffalo, but the scoreboard stayed tied until the final two minutes. Colten Ellis kept it that way with a diving stop that robbed Gauthier of what would have been the go-ahead goal, according to the Sabres' website.

Then Thompson took over. At 18:36, Krebs won a faceoff and Thompson hammered a one-timer for a 4-3 lead. Fifteen seconds later, at 18:51, he skated around Anaheim's defense, went in alone and finished the breakaway for his third goal of the night. Cue the hats.

That 15-second stretch was the whole game in miniature: Anaheim had hung around for 38 minutes, and Thompson needed two shifts' worth of chaos to put them in a two-goal hole. Jack Quinn made it 6-3 on the power play at 1:57 of the third, with Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin assisting, and Benson made it 7-3 at 6:37.

The Ducks Refuse to Go Quietly

To Anaheim's credit, it did not fold. Gauthier, whose first-period goal had ended a nine-game drought, scored his second power-play goal of the night at 7:26 of the third, and the Ducks kept coming. With Ville Husso on the bench for an extra attacker, Tristan Luneau scored at 18:52 and Beckett Sennecke ripped one home unassisted at 19:29 to make it 7-6.

Suddenly a laugher was a nail-biter. Ellis made one more big stop on Jackson LaCombe in the final 30 seconds, according to the Sabres, and Buffalo escaped. Gordon Bombay would have been proud of the Ducks' fight, if not of the defense that allowed six straight goals before it.

Stars of the Night

Thompson was the obvious headliner with three goals and two assists in 17:49. His 10th career hat trick tied Alexander Mogilny and Danny Gare for the third-most in Sabres history, per the AP, and the Sabres noted that only Rick Martin (21) and Gilbert Perreault (18) have more. According to the team, only Toronto's Auston Matthews has more hat tricks than Thompson since the start of the 2021-22 season, and this was Thompson's fourth career five-point game, tied with Gare and Mogilny for fourth-most in franchise history. He now has eight goals on the season.

Krebs had three assists after being bumped up to the top line alongside Thompson, with Konsta Helenius out with an upper-body injury, according to the Sabres. Benson added a goal and two assists, and Dahlin had two assists in 26:00 of ice time.

Ellis made 29 saves on 35 shots. The numbers are ugly, but his second-period robbery of Gauthier and the late stop on LaCombe were the difference between a win and an overtime coin flip.

For Anaheim, Leo Carlsson had three assists, Gauthier scored twice, and Sennecke had a goal and an assist for his eighth goal of the season. LaCombe played a massive 29:36 with two assists on a blue line that, per the AP, is missing injured defensemen Pavel Mintyukov and Ian Moore. Husso allowed seven goals on 31 shots.

Stats That Matter

• 6: Consecutive Buffalo goals after Anaheim's 3-1 lead.
• 15 seconds: The gap between Thompson's second and third goals.
• 3-for-4: Anaheim's power play, compared with Buffalo's 2-for-3. Special teams were a coin toss that the Ducks actually won.
• 35-31: Anaheim's edge in shots, plus a 59.7 percent faceoff rate that did not translate.
• 21: Ducks giveaways, more than enough to feed Thompson.

What It Means

Buffalo improves to 6-4-3 with 15 points and has won two straight, following a 2-0 shutout in San Jose with this chaos in Anaheim. The Sabres are 2-0-1 on their four-game road trip, which wraps up Saturday in Los Angeles.

Anaheim falls to 5-7-1 with 11 points and has lost seven of its last eight games, according to the AP. The Ducks are just 1-4-1 at Honda Center this season, a brutal home record for a team trying to stay in the race. Anaheim hosts Ottawa on Sunday.

Closing Take

On a night with 13 goals, it took one player to separate the teams. Thompson's 15-second burst flipped a tight game into a runaway, and Buffalo's late defensive wobble nearly flipped it right back. The Sabres will take the two points, but they will not want to watch the final two minutes again. For Thompson, though, this one goes straight into the highlight reel, with a dozen hats to prove it.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details from the Associated Press and the Buffalo Sabres on nhl.com.