Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) - Before we move forward, let's take a step backwards into Sunday Night and Game 1 of the Sabres series against the Boston Bruins.
With 12 minutes left in regulation time, Boston had a 2-0 lead. I always say that if a team is going to win, their best players need to be their best players. Relentless physical play by the Sabres seemed to wear down the Bruins. Tage Thompson took over the game and his teammates came right with him and by the 18:48 mark, Buffalo had four goals and a 4-2 lead.
I can think of two other times that the fans rocked the Sabres world like they did on Monday both in the building and at Canalside. The first time it actually would’ve been in the Aud for the “May Day” goal that swept the series over the Bruins and the playoff game against the New York Rangers when Chris Drury scored with 7.7 seconds left in regulation to send Game 5 to overtime. Max Afinogenov scored 4:39 into overtime and Danny Briere said they were worried the fans were coming through the ceiling of the locker room as the walls were shaking.
Back to Monday, the fans were rocking the building as their team came out for warmup. Lindy Ruff was the team’s coach for all three games, but he was really impressed with what he saw on Monday.
“It puts a smile on your face for sure, and there’s a combination that it’s been a long time, way too long and our city has been begging for something like this and the way that we played for four months, that builds up a lot of anticipation for how the playoffs could go and I think last night’s game kind of followed the route, it wasn’t looking good, it wasn’t looking good and then all of a sudden you pour on four goals in the last eight minutes then if there was a chance of bringing the building down, they were going to try and probably wreck Canalside I heard too,” Ruff said with a laugh.
Thompson had mentioned before the game that they know how Boston wants to play them and it happened. It seemed like there was always a Bruin in every passing lane and killing plays. I think the reason Buffalo came back was they didn’t get frustrated and they initiated the physical play throughout. Boston, especially their defensemen, appeared to get worn down. Ruff said,
“We didn’t deviate from what we were trying to do. We understand how they play and they’ve had a lot of success with it and we understand how we play and we talked about after the second period just staying with our game a doing a better job of getting closer together in the offensive zone and a lot of our battles it was two and if you look at the couple of the goals, our three forwards got tight around the net, the battles behind the net and the netfront there was three forwards, I thought in the first two periods we were a little bit slow getting there and we feel the longer we can stay with our game, the better the chances that we can win a hockey game.”
Ruff thought the battles down low is where his team started to excel as the Bruins wore down. He mentioned Alex Tuch and Peyton Krebs as well as Thompson get dominating around the net.
Only one team had more goals from their defensemen this season than the Sabres. The Columbus Blue Jackets got 58 goals from their defensemen while the Sabres got 55 from theirs. Buffalo’s ‘D’ just seems to know how to read plays for the opportunity. Ruff said that came into play in the third period,
“During a timeout on the ice we told them we want to ramp up the risk in our game and make sure the defense are getting involved and they’re getting up ice and I thought our defense did a great job of doing that.
“You look at the goal, Samuelsson sneaking in the backdoor and there was three or four plays where we were doing a lot better job of getting those guys up ice and they’ve been such a big part of our offense and that part of our game we don’t want to change.”
In the second period David Pastrnak had two breakaways and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made three game saving saves on those two breakaways. I don’t think there is a comeback if the Bruins superstar scores there. Ruff knows Pastrnak has a knack of getting behind the defense and he also knows they have to figure out a way to stop it,
“We have to be better, we showed those clips (Monday) and they’re really good at it, and he’s really good at timing it and we’re trying to keep a puck alive, but they get possession and he’s in behind you and we’ve got to be better defending that by being just a little bit more aware with out off-side D that he doesn’t spin out and take off.”
Ruff thought it would be better to have an optional skate Monday with a film session so the team could get their rest after an emotional night.
Game 2 is Tuesday in Buffalo with a 7:35 puck drop.
Buffalo scored four goals in the second half of the third period to win
Buffalo scored four goals in the second half of the third period to win
