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Roy leads charge as Sabres outlast Canadiens

Mar 3, 2007 - 6:28 AM BUFFALO, New York (Ticker) -- In helping the Buffalo Sabres come within a goal of a season best, Derek Roy matched a career high.

Roy collected four points and and rookie Michael Ryan scored his first two career goals as the Sabres skated to an 8-5 victory over the Montreal Canadiens.

A second-round pick in 2001, Roy recorded a hat trick and added an assist against Tampa Bay on March 9, 2006 for his first career four-point performance. He matched the effort in this one, netting a tally and setting up three others.

Playing in his eighth career game, Ryan netted his first goal at 1:40 of the first period. Just 20 seconds after defenseman Dmitri Kalinin opened the scoring, the 26-year-old tipped in Adam Mair's pass past goaltender David Aebischer for a 2-0 bulge.

"It was nice to get the first one out of the way," Ryan said. "I played a little tight the first few games. I just gave a quick shout to Adam, just perfect timing, and he was able to pass it through the crease. Things just slowed down for a second, and it was a pretty fun feeling seeing that puck go over the line."

Ryan staked Buffalo to a 4-1 advantage 7 1/2 minutes into the middle session with a shorthanded tally, redirecting Jochen Hecht's pass by Aebischer on a 2-on-1 rush.

"We said that (Dainius) Zubrus might turn him into a veteran," Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff said. "He's well on his way with a two-goal game. I thought he skated well. His hands matched his skating tonight, and he scored a couple nice goals for us."

Thomas Vanek scored twice, defenseman Teppo Numminen had a goal and two assists and Hecht set up three tallies for the Sabres, who came within one goal of their best output of the season. On October 17, Buffalo - which has scored seven goals or more eight times this campaign - erupted for nine tallies in a rout of Philadelphia.

"We talked about Montreal's desperation looking for points coming into this game," Ruff said. "We wanted to match or exceed that. We want to keep rolling. We came out great, but we made some mistakes. We got careless in our own end, which cost us goals, but at the same time we really went after them. It led to the opportunities we had."

The Sabres (43-16-5), who have scored 31 of their league-leading 248 goals in the last five games, won for the eighth time in 10 contests and pulled ahead of the idle Nashville Predators (43-18-4) in the race for the Presidents' Trophy.

Tomas Plekanec had two goals and an assist and defenseman Mark Streit netted one tally and set up another for Montreal (33-28-6), which has lost three of four and fell one point behind Carolina (33-27-7) for eighth place in the Eastern Conference.

"We took bad penalties," Plekanec said. "We played bad defensively. All five guys have to play much better on the defense. We just didn't do it."

The eight goals allowed was a season high for the Canadiens, whose previous mark was six in a loss to the Boston Bruins on December 4.

"These kind of games are going to happen," Montreal coach Guy Carbonneau said. "We talked about it before the game. They have six or seven injuries, but they were playing really well lately. We end up down two goals quickly, which is not really the start I was looking for in one of the biggest games we have. We were able to come back a lot of times, but every time we came back, we made mistakes."

Zubrus, who was acquired from Washington at Tuesday's trade deadline, did not record a point in his debut with Buffalo.

"I thought he was real solid," Ruff said. "He gave us a real boost on the faceoffs. He made some nice plays. For the first game, I thought he fit in nicely. He asked a lot of questions. He said that our approach was a lot more aggressive."

Aebischer allowed seven goals on just 29 shots, falling to 1-4-0 with 22 tallies surrendered in his last five starts.