Senators 6, Sabres 3

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OTTAWA - Daniel Alfredsson was as surprised as anybody in Scotiabank Place on Saturday night to learn that he had reached another milestone.

Alfredsson and Nick Foligno each scored twice to lead the Ottawa Senators to a 6-3 victory over the Buffalo Sabres.

Alfredsson - Ottawa's career leader in goals, assists, points and games - got his 350th goal when he opened the scoring on a power play 4:44 into the game.

The Ottawa captain beat former teammate Patrick Lalime on a shot from the left side eight seconds after Buffalo defenceman Tony Lydman was sent off for interference.

"I didn't even know it until they showed it tonight, but it's obviously getting closer to 400, which I hope I'm going to achieve," Alfredsson said. "Five hundred, maybe it's a little too far off, who knows."

Alfredsson added his 351st goal - his second of the game and 20th of the season - in the third, moments after Foligno also got his second of the night as he finished off a 2-on-1 with Ryan Shannon to put Ottawa up 5-3.

"That's unbelievable," said Foligno, the son of 355-goal scorer Mike Foligno. "That's a lot of goals and obviously it's a nice tribute to how good of a player he is and how hard he's worked in this league and, hopefully, he gets many more."

Chris Campoli gave Ottawa its fourth and final lead 9:35 into the third when he put a shot from the outer edge of the left faceoff circle past Lalime moments after the Sabres tied it at 3-3.

Jochen Hecht drew Buffalo even for the third straight time with the Sabres' third power-play goal at 8:16.

Tomas Vanek and Drew Stafford also scored with the man advantage as the Sabres' erased three one-goal leads.

Buffalo had won two in a row, including a 5-1 win over Phoenix on Friday night.

The Sabres, locked in a tight battle to make the playoffs, fell to 1-3-1 against Ottawa this season.

The Senators are 19-6-4 overall against Buffalo through the last four seasons.

"Everybody's talking about it and talking about it, and I think we just need to loosen up, don't think about it," Sabres defenceman Jaroslav Spacek said. "We can play any team in the league, it's in our heads that we're losing to them game after game after game. We need to think that it's a different team."

Ottawa, which won its second in a row, is 12th in the Eastern Conference with 60 points and will likely miss the playoffs for the first time since 1996.

"There's no question, it's tough to mentally get yourself fully proficient because they have to fight for it," Alfredsson said. "And that's what we have to do in our locker room before games, mentally get our battle level up and make sure we're ready for games. I think we've done a really good job the last couple of games here and, hopefully, we can keep that going."

Ottawa took the lead twice in the second on goals by Chris Kelly and Foligno, who scored with 31.4 seconds remaining in the middle period to make it 3-2.

"That was the game changer right there, just being able to counter every time they got something going," Foligno said.

Vanek got his 33rd at 18:15 when his shot flipped over Elliott to tie it at 2-2. Stafford's 19th goal evened it at 1-1 midway through the first.

The Sabres missed a great opportunity to take the lead 4:58 into the second. Vanek's low shot at an otherwise wide open right side wound up under Anton Volchenkov's legs as the Ottawa defenceman lay sprawled face down on the ice beside the right post.

"We had opportunities to capture momentum and I thought the end of the second period hurt us," Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. "The play we made, we swung off a guy down in our zone and lost coverage, and instead of us getting momentum off the goal we scored, we gave them momentum."

Notes: Spacek went to the dressing room briefly in the first after he was flattened on a hit by Foligno after making a pass deep in his own zone ... Alfredsson has 906 points, including 555 assists, in 915 regular-season games ... Ottawa's Jason Smith left the game midway through the first period. The veteran defenseman suffered a lower body injury and did not return ... The Senators play Game 7 of their eight-game homestand at Scotiabank Place on Monday night, when the Toronto Maple Leafs supply the opposition. Fewer than 2,500 tickets remain for the final appearance by the Leafs in Ottawa this season.