Donato wins it in OT, Blackhawks defeat Sabres to end six-game slide

CHICAGO -- Ryan Donato scored at 3:12 of overtime, and the Chicago Blackhawks ended a six-game slide with a 3-2 victory against the Buffalo Sabres at United Center on Thursday.

The forward circled in the offensive zone, moved to the slot and put a wrist shot past Sabres goalie Alex Lyon.

“I don't know if I had a virus come (on) in the last seconds ... I'm not even kidding with you,” Donato said. “I felt terrible. Said a couple extra prayers to get those bounces and just bear down and got one tonight, so it felt good."

Frank Nazar scored twice and Spencer Knight made 21 saves for the Blackhawks (5-13-1), who had gone 1-8-1 in their past 10 games. Sam Rinzel had two assists.

“I thought our defensive details were good,” said Chicago coach Jeff Blashill, whose team hadn’t played since a 9-2 loss at Carolina on Nov. 7. “I thought we checked hard, I thought we checked well. You just go stretches where you don’t practice enough, so it was good to get those practices in. I thought the guys dialed in on their defensive details. It was a real strong suit of the game. I didn’t think we had our best game.”

Owen Power and Tage Thompson each scored, and Jack Quinn had two assists for the Sabres (8-7-4), who have lost their past three games (0-2-1). Alex Lyon made 22 saves in his season debut. He sustained an upper-body injury during the preseason and was activated from injured reserve before the game.

The Sabres were coming off an 8-3 loss at home against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday, in which they used goalies Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Colten Ellis.

“Good,” Lyon said of his first start this season. “Pretty comfortable. I put in a lot of work here in the last couple of weeks. It felt nice that it kind of paid off. I felt pretty good, but it’s kind of the perfect storm when you don’t win. You feel good, but it’s still a bad feeling. Just have to keep grinding. We got a long road trip ahead of us, and so we’ve got to make the most out of every opportunity.”

Power put the Sabres ahead 1-0 at 9:00 of the first period. Josh Norris made a backhand pass from the slot to Power, who scored with a one-timer over Knight’s right shoulder from the top of the right face-off circle.

Nazar tied the game 1-1 with a power-play goal at 12:22. He got Connor Bedard’s pass from the bottom of the left circle and tapped the puck over Lyon's left skate at the near post.

Thompson put Buffalo back on top 2-1 on the power play at 15:46. Quinn fought off Chicago forward Jordan Greenway along the left-wing boards and backhanded a pass to Thompson, who fired a wrist shot in from the face-off dot.

“We came into tonight making sure we weren’t giving them many rush chances,” Thompson said. “We were on the right side of pucks. I thought we did that. I thought we played a pretty solid game. Obviously, we can find ways to generate offense a little bit more. I thought we played a pretty good game. (Stinks) the result being what it was, but definitely, in my opinion, a better response than the last game.”

Nazar scored his second of the game to tie it 2-2 at 8:22 of the third period. Rinzel put the puck toward the net from the high slot, and it went into the net off the blade of Nazar's stick.

“Definitely a thing we talked about too this week: getting to the net, screening the goalie more, winning those box-outs and that fight to the net,” Nazar said. “Continue to do that and good things will happen.” 

NOTES: Thompson tallied his 225th career goal with Buffalo to pass Miroslav Satan (224) for eighth place on the franchise’s all-time list. … Chicago forward Patrick Kane returned to the Blackhawks’ lineup after missing three games with an upper-body injury. Kane played 17:39 and had four shots on goal. … Chicago forward Roman Kantserov had an assist to extend his point streak (six goals, three assists) to nine games since Oct. 25. He became the fourth different rookie with a run of that length in Blackhawks history after Steve Larmer (10 games from Dec. 8-29, 1982 & nine games from Nov. 14 – Dec. 1, 1982), Jonathan Toews (10 games from Oct. 10-31, 2007) and Jeremy Roenick (nine games from Jan. 27 – Feb. 18, 1990).