Vets help B’s bounce back
Marchand & Co. stifle Sabres
BUFFALO — Guilt, they say, is a great motivator. Embarrassment works pretty well, too. And after their humiliating loss to the Washington Capitals in the season opener Wednesday, the Bruins were surely feeling those emotions and more last night as they looked for a reset in Game 2 against the Sabres.
The result was a ho-hum 4-0 victory for the Bruins that had the local fans headed for the exits midway through the third period. It was the B’s veteran core that led the way. Brad Marchand notched four assists, Zdeno Chara, David Pastrnak, Ryan Donato (power play) and Patrice Bergeron (empty-netter) scored the goals and Jaroslav Halak was solid in net.
“We all knew to a man, from the coaching staff on down, that we weren’t good enough (Wednesday) night, so we needed to be better today and we were,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said. “Guys we count on led and the followers followed. That’s the way it’s scripted and it worked out for us tonight.” It also helped that they weren’t playing the defending Stanley Cup champions, but rather a group of talented young players who have not figured out a way to play as a team yet.
The KeyBank Center had considerable less buzz than Capital One Arena in Washington when the Capitals raised their banner. Still, there was some anticipation in these parts for the newlook Sabres. No. 1 overall pick Rasmus Dahlin made his debut and newcomers Jeff Skinner, Vladimir Sobotka, Tage Thompson, Patrik Berglund and Carter Hutton were also playing their first games in blue and gold.
The B’s not only felt their fair share of shame from the previous night, Cassidy made some personnel changes — Anders Bjork in, Chris Wagner out — and shook up the bottom three lines.
But the B’s did not not let the crowd into the game in the first period as they took a 2-0 lead and kept the pressure off Halak.
Chara scored the Bruins’ first goal of the season at 6:33. Marchand gained the offensive zone on his off wing and, at the right circle, did a button-hook curl toward the boards to draw a crowd. He found the captain on the other side of the ice with a pass and Chara cruised unimpeded to the bottom of the left circle before beating Hutton to the shortside with a hard wrist shot.
“It was big. We talked about it and obviously it’s our job to lead this team and we put yesterday behind us,” Chara said. “That’s going to happen. It’s very unfortunate. It’s not the outcome we wanted but we moved on and turned the page to get ready for tonight’s game. Another home opener, we knew we had to have a much better pace and work way harder than we did yesterday and it paid off. You could see the guys were really coming back. We had good sticks, blocking shots, making plays, so I thought it was a good 60-minute effort.”
Later in the period, Pastrnak drew a slashing penalty on Sobotka after Pastrnak did a full orbit of the offensive zone. On the ensuing power play, the B’s courted disaster
in the neutral zone for a few seconds before Donato gained the zone. He dished it quickly to Bergeron and, from just inside the blue line on the right side, Bergeron fed Marchand going down the left side. Marchand in turn gave the puck back to Donato on the right side for an easy goal.
The B’s held an 11-6 shot advantage in the first. Halak was tested once in the period and he came up with a good save on Evan Rodrigues at the top of the crease.
The Sabres started to spend more time in the B’s zone in the second period and the hosts held a big shot advantage at one point. But the B’s kept pucks to the outside, taking away space away from Sabres puck handlers and Halak handled any shots that came his way.
And then at 16:16, the B’s put what looked like a vise grip on the game.
In the midst of a line change, Marchand again did a great job of hustling down low on his off wing to grab a loose puck and fed David Krejci on the right side of the slot. Krejci spotted his Czech countryman wide open on the left side and he lifted the puck over the helpless Hutton for a 3-0 advantage.
“We had a pretty good game. We didn’t have a great third but Jaro did a great job shutting the door,” Marchand said. “But it’s great to get a good win after a night like (Wednesday) night, on a back-to-back with the travels. It was good, but we still have a lot to work on and improve upon. We’ll take the positives from this and keep working.”