Teravainen lifts Hurricanes past Sabres in overtime

BUFFALO -- Teuvo Teravainen scored with 1:35 remaining in overtime to lift the Carolina Hurricanes to a 6-5 win against the Buffalo Sabres at KeyBank Center on Thursday.

Teravainen had two goals and an assist, Sebastian Aho, Andrei Svechnikov and Jordan Martinook each had two assists, and Curtis McElhinney made 34 saves for the Hurricanes (27-21-6) who won for the 12th time in the past 17 games (12-4-1) and the eighth straight time against the Sabres.
"I was pretty tired," Teravainen said. "I saw Justin Faulk there but then I saw he wasn't there anymore so I figured I'd go myself and try something. At the end, I felt like I should try a move and I got lucky, the goalie went for my move."
WATCH: [All Hurricanes vs. Sabres highlights]
Jeff Skinner scored twice, and Linus Ullmark made 24 saves for the Sabres (26-20-7), who lost for the fourth time in the past six games (2-3-1).
"It's a choice you got to make, protecting your own net, having a respect for it," Buffalo coach Phil Housley said. "You look at the game, the five of the six goals come right in front of our own net. That's the one thing players from our opposition should be very wary of going into. No. 1, we got to be tougher to play against. We've got to start pushing guys out, boxing guys out, have a fear that if something gets into that area, there's not going to be the looks that this team had tonight."

Buffalo scored twice in the final five minutes of the third period to tie the game. Marco Scandella scored with 4:19 remaining to make it 5-4 before Skinner tied the game at 5-5 with 55 seconds left with Ullmark pulled for an extra attacker. Sam Reinhart had the primary assist on each goal.
"We had the game in our hands and then we weren't smart enough and we let them come back," Teravainen said. "We have to be more careful at the end there."
Nino Niederreiter scored a power-play goal at 14:58 of the third to give Carolina a 5-3 lead after Brock McGinn made it 4-3 at 11:03

Greg McKegg put the Hurricanes up 3-2 at 1:54 of the third. Skinner tied it 3-3, holding off Justin Faulk on a breakaway before sliding the puck through McElhinney's pads at 5:48.
Faulk gave the Hurricanes a 1-0 lead when he took a pass from Aho at the right faceoff dot at 4:04 of the first period.
Teravainen put Carolina up 2-0 at 1:37 of the second period. Ullmark made a sprawling save on Martinook to the right of the net but the puck bounced out to his left, where Teravainen slid it in on the backhand.
"He's one of those players that's an elite game-changing type player," Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "He has that type of talent. Obviously you saw it tonight in overtime and also on the power-play goal, he was in the right place picking up the backdoor stuff and making a nice pass. That's what he can do for us."

Evan Rodrigues scored at 8:15 of the second to make it 2-1 two seconds after a Sabres power play expired.
Jason Pominville tied it 2-2 on a rebound of his own shot from the bottom of the left circle at 15:14.
"We gave up too much," Skinner said. "Obviously, it's tough to win giving up that much. I think a couple breakdowns, the first one was probably 100 percent on me. … I thought we did a good job of battling back. [Scandella] got a big goal for us there and [Reinhart] makes a good play for us to tie it up, get a point. We just have to find a way to give up less than that."

They said it

"I feel like we're getting better at those one-goal games. We lost a couple of leads there but I feel like we're learning from our mistakes. Maybe at the start of the season we would have lost that game but now we're getting better." -- Hurricanes forward Teuvo Teravainen
"We've all got to realize that we've got guys who are capable of making plays when we need too offensively. And with that being said, we need to have more respect for our own end. We need to all come back and pick up guys. If your shift calls for defending their guys, their top guys, that's what you're expected to do and we need more out of everyone in that regard." -- Sabres forward Sam Reinhart

Need to know

The Hurricanes reached 60 points in their first 54 games for the first time since 2005-06. … Aho has 10 points (five goals, five assists) in eight games against the Sabres. … With his goal, Pominville moved past Mike Foligno into sole possession of eighth place in Sabres history with 512 points. … Carolina hasn't lost to the Sabres since a 3-2 loss on March 22, 2016. ... McElhinney, claimed off waivers from the Toronto Maple Leafs on Oct. 2, won his 13th game of the season to set a new NHL career high.

What's next

Hurricanes: At the New York Rangers on Friday (8 p.m. ET, NHLN, SN, MSG+, FS-CR, NHL.TV)
Sabres: Host the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday (1 p.m. ET, MSG-B, FS-D, NHL.TV)