Three takeaways

Slash and burn. Golden Knights center Paul Stastny was assessed two slashing penalties in the first period, and the Sabres capitalized on their second opportunity with the man advantage. The free-agent signee leads the team with six penalty minutes and is yet to record a point. Line changes. Coach Gerard Gallant switched his bottom six forwards late in the second period, reuniting the International Line (Pierre-edouard Bellemare, William Carrier and Tomas Nosek) and moving Ryan Reaves to the third line. “Just trying to do something,” Gallant said.

Power play struggles. The Knights failed to score on both of their power plays and are 0-for-8 this season. They had four shots on goal with the man advantage and generated almost as many when short-handed (three).

David Schoen

the slot early in the second period.

Erik Haula cut the Knights’ deficit in half less than three minutes later, but Buffalo answered with two goals 1:28 apart.

Marco Scandella’s shot from the point deflected off Karlsson’s backside and fluttered past Knights goaltender Marc-andre Fleury at 8:15. Jason Pominville put the Sabres on top 4-1 at 9:43 when he eluded the backcheck of Oscar Lindberg in the slot and buried a feed from Evan Rodrigues.

Fleury, who finished with 13 saves, made four stops in the final two periods.

“It’s always frustrating when you lose, it doesn’t matter what the score is or how it happened,” Fleury said. “I’m confident we’re a group of guys that if we play the way we did the second half of the game, we should be in good shape.”

Contact David Schoen at dschoen@reviewjournal.com or 702387-5203. Follow @Davidschoenlvrj on Twitter.