Garland, Coyotes rally to defeat Sabres in shootout

BUFFALO -- Conor Garland had a goal and an assist for the Arizona Coyotes in a come-from-behind 3-2 win against the Buffalo Sabres at KeyBank Center on Monday.

Carl Soderberg scored for the Coyotes (7-3-1), who trailed 2-0 in the first period. Arizona has won six of seven games, including three of four during their road trip.
"We had a trip like this at the end of last] year that kind of cost us the playoff spot, so all these trips are going to be important," Garland said. "They're hard trips for any team going out east or teams coming out west, so to go 3-1, that's a big-time road trip."
***[WATCH: [All Coyotes vs. Sabres highlights]*
Darcy Kuemper made 24 saves through overtime before stopping all three Sabres he faced in the shootout. Nick Schmaltz scored the only goal in the tiebreaker.
Jack Eichel scored on his 23rd birthday, and Carter Hutton made 42 saves for Buffalo (9-2-2), which lost for the second time in six games and had its season-opening five-game home winning streak end.

The Sabres hit the crossbar twice in overtime, Sam Reinhart at 19 seconds and Casey Mittelstadt with 36 seconds left.
Eichel gave Buffalo a 1-0 lead at 3:31 of the first period, scoring three seconds into a power play.
Jeff Skinner finished off a give-and-go with Marcus Johansson to make it 2-0 at 11:16.
"We get a lead, but obviously you don't want to give away a 2-0 lead at home," Eichel said. "We've got to find a way to get that next goal."

Garland cut it to 2-1 at 18:50 with a sharp-angled shot from below the right face-off circle.
"That was kind of my spot on the power play in junior, and I used to try those quite a bit," he said. "You're not going to get many of those, but when I have it, I'll try it."
Soderberg tied it 2-2 on the power play at 16:32 of the second period. Garland's shot from the top of the left circle hit Soderberg's stick and bounced up in the air before falling onto Hutton's back and into the net.
"Going down two early, especially at the end of a trip, it takes a lot of character to put your heels down and start moving forward," Kuemper said. "Just it started shift by shift and the forecheck got going, and slowly we took over the game."

The Coyotes outshot the Sabres 30-15 in the second and third periods, and Arizona had the only shot in overtime.
"Down the stretch, they were the better team," Buffalo coach Ralph Krueger said. "We were actually pleased to get that to overtime. We raised our game again, pushed hard for the win and had the opportunity there. I would say the shot total was a result of our energy today, just not there where we need it for our 'A' game, and our game asks for a lot of movement, a lot of speed, a lot of skating, and I feel we hit a bit of a wall today."
Garland left the game at 10:44 of the third period after the puck hit him in the ear when Rasmus Dahlin tried to clear it from the Sabres zone.
"Tough spot. Just a bad bounce, turned right into it," Garland said.

They said it

"I think we've just got a good mix of depth. Everyone's playing on the same page, everyone's playing the right way, and we're going into games with the mindset that we're going to win. When you're thinking like that, it doesn't really matter how the game goes, we stick with it and we believe that we're in every game and we're going to win every game, and I think that's why we're having so much success." -- Coyotes goalie Darcy Kuemper
"I think there were stretches we were in our end and we gave up too much. There were stretches we were in our end and we kind of held them to the outside and weathered the storm. [Carter Hutton] made some big saves for us, and it just seemed every time we went in the O zone we were kind of one and done. We didn't really get any sustained pressure down there. It probably kind of hurt us overall in the game." -- Sabres forward Jeff Skinner

Need to know

Arizona came back to win consecutive games after trailing by multiple goals in each for the second time in its history (March 18-20, 2010, against the Florida Panthers and Chicago Blackhawks). The Coyotes defeated the New Jersey Devils 5-3 on Oct. 25 after falling behind 2-0. ... Eichel's goal moved him into a tie with Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers and David Pastrnak of the Boston Bruins for the NHL lead in power-play points with nine (four goals, five assists).

What's next

Coyotes: Host the Montreal Canadiens on Wednesday (10 p.m. ET; FS-A PLUS, TSN2, RDS, NHL.TV)
Sabres: At the Washington Capitals on Friday (7 p.m. ET; SN, NBCSWA, MSG-B, NHL.TV)