Sabres Finally Show Some Life

So the Buffalo Sabres do have some offense--and the Pittsburgh Penguins don’t have nearly as much as they thought without the injured Jaromir Jagr.

Jason Woolley’s tip-in midway through the third period broke a tie, and the Sabres rediscovered their offense to avoid going down three games, beating the Penguins, 4-1, Monday night.

The Sabres trailed, 2-0, in the series and 1-0 in the second period until solving rookie goaltender Johan Hedberg twice in the third period. They added an empty-net goal in the final minute.

The Sabres had scored on only one of 64 shots before finally coming alive against Hedberg, the former Manitoba Moose goalie.

“We did what they did to us,” said Doug Gilmour, who assisted on the decisive goal. “When they came into our building, they waited and waited, and when they had some chances they capitalized. We had to be patient too.”

Curtis Brown tied it at 13:04 of the second period, and goalie Dominik Hasek shut down Pittsburgh’s ineffective offense before Woolley, a former Penguin player, got the go-ahead goal at 9:51 of the third.

Miroslav Satan prevented any Penguin comeback with a wraparound goal at 13:03 off a rebound after Maxim Afinogenov faked defenseman Darius Kasparaitis off his skates with a drive to the net.

James Patrick added an empty-net goal to make it 4-1.

The Penguins’ offense clearly badly missed Jagr, the five-time NHL scoring champion who sat out his second successive game because of a shoulder or rotator cuff problem.

With the seldom-used Rene Corbet unable to make up Jagr’s missing offense on the Mario Lemieux line, the Penguins were held to 20 shots, 12 after the first period.

Game 4 will be Wednesday.

“In Philadelphia [in the first round], we won the two games there and if we are to have a chance in this series, I think we have to do the same thing here,” Satan said. “We don’t want to go home 3-1.”

Around the league

Dallas Star center Mike Modano, who sat out Game 2 of the second-round series against the St. Louis Blues because of an ankle injury, skated Monday and is expected to return in tonight’s Game 3. Another center, Shaun Van Allen, underwent surgery to repair a broken jaw one day after taking a puck in the face off a shot from Blues’ defenseman Al MacInnis.