Patrick Kaleta didn't score the game-winning goal. He wasn't on the ice when it went in the

net. His entire stat line was unremarkable.

But make no mistake, Kaleta was influential in the Sabres earning their first victory of

the season Thursday.

The Sabres beat the Phoenix Coyotes, 2-1, in an emotional game that started as anything

but. The teams played a solid, incident-free first period in HSBC Arena. There were 21 shots,

no goals and no penalties, setting the groundwork for the type of outing in which goaltending

or a timely tally would be the story.

Then Kaleta stepped in. He laid out the Coyotes' Petr Prucha with an early Hit of the Year

candidate just 32 seconds into the second period. The Coyotes were never the same, their rage

boiling over and settling into the penalty box. Phoenix went after Kaleta five times, and five

times they were called for infractions.

Their discipline gone, the Coyotes hit Thomas Vanek, too, and their final penalty was

finally their undoing. Vanek scored on the ensuing man advantage with 3:53 left, snapping the

1-1 tie and an 0-for-12 power-play drought.

"If a guy's got his head down and I can stick him with a good hit, I'm going to," Kaleta

said. "That's part of the game. That's what happened. If they want to come after me, I'll just

let our power play go out."

Though the Sabres didn't score on any of the penalties Kaleta drew, he gave the power-play

unit enough practice to find its game-winning groove. It finished 1 for 7 with 15 shots in

11:54 of man-advantage time.

"The goal-per-chance ratio wasn't very good," Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. "We had some

excellent chances. You could sense a little frustration coming in, but I thought we stuck with

it and Van scored a heckuva goal for us."

Vanek's first of the season came on a tic-tac-toe play in which Derek Roy quickly pushed

the puck to Clarke MacArthur at the goal line, and MacArthur wasted no time feeding Vanek at

the front of the net. His one-timer beat hard-luck goaltender Jason LaBarbera, who faced 39

shots and kept Phoenix in the game despite its penalty trouble.

"We're in a game that our goaltender is giving us a chance to win, and we go out there and

take six more minutes in penalties?" Phoenix coach Dave Tippett said incredulously. "That's

disgusting."

The 18,690 in the arena watched more than two periods of scoreless hockey before Phoenix

finally lit the goal lamp. Although the Coyotes' penalty killers got most of the work, it was

their power-play unit that put them ahead.

Adrian Aucoin, with the puck at the point, spotted Matthew Lombardi cruising to the right

side of the net. The defenseman unleashed a slap pass that Lombardi easily tipped into the net

with 2:37 gone in the third.

It was the first puck the Coyotes had ever gotten past Ryan Miller, who earned a 2-0

shutout in January in his only other appearance against Phoenix.

With the seals on the nets finally broken, the Sabres answered right back. Rookie

defenseman Tyler Myers kept a puck in at the blue line and fed MacArthur, who put a backhand

by LaBarbera just 1:37 after the Coyotes scored.

"It was a good answer for their goal, to come right back and get the goal," Ruff said.

The Coyotes, who were coming off a 3-0 victory in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, could only rely on

LaBarbera so much. They were outshot, 25-16, in the final two periods as the Sabres

continually attacked.

"Even when they scored, I don't think there was any panic," MacArthur said. "We knew we

were all over them, and they had a tough game [Wednesday]. They battled hard, and you could

see they were kind of getting tired out in the third. I think we took advantage of that late."

Of course, it helped that Phoenix was short-handed for 11:54 of the final 40 minutes. Kaleta's

hit on Prucha, who never returned, was the reason for that.

"Patty Kaleta did a great job getting under their skin," said Miller, who made 23 saves.

"He got a good hit on a guy that wasn't looking. That threw them off."