B’s survive scare from Sabres
Send Buffalo to 17th straight defeat
The Bruins passed “Go” and collected their two points from the lowly Buffalo Sabres on Saturday. But the B’s makeshift lineup had to sweat for the win at the Garden, that’s for sure.
Craig Smith gave the B’s their first lead of the game with 3:50 left in regulation when, after the B’s crashed the net, he buried a loose puck to make it 3-2. That’s how it stayed, and the Sabres had suffered their 17th consecutive loss. And that breeze you may have felt in the late afternoon was perhaps the Bruins letting out a collective “Pheeeew!”
The B’s played catch-up most of the game, with an early Buffalo goal that, combined with the B’s agonizing futility in the scoring department, gave the Sabres a shred of belief that this just might be their day.
But as much as it looked like the Sabres might be willing to do enough things to finally get in the win column, the B’s turned up the heat and snatched the game away from them. The line of Smith, David Krejci and Nick Ritchie produced both thirdperiod goals.
“I thought we were opportunistic,” said Smith. “Some of the focus was getting in front of the net and being a little more hungry around the net.”
Indeed, coach Bruce Cassidy briefly stopped practice on Friday and yelled, “Score some (bleeping) goals by going to the (bleeping) net!”
And all three goals the B’s scored had some semblance of net-front presence.
“Obviously I’m happy they got rewarded. When you’re trying to preach something … and it happens for you, then it’s a lot easier to back it up, with your own eyes and through video, that, ‘Hey, this is the way goals are scored,’ ” said Cassidy. “Obviously we’d like to be a better rush team and we’d like to be better functioning and more efficient on the power play (0-for-4 on Saturday). But in the meantime, five-on-five, we’ve got to get some traffic.
Charlie Coyle again, right in front of the goaltender (on Matt Grzelcyk’s goal in the second period). And then the other goals were just a matter of people getting there and the puck arriving on time. I’m happy for the guys. It was a battle out there. No easy games in this league. But credit to us. We played winning hockey in the third period, at both ends of the ice.”
On the winner, Smith carried the puck into the offensive zone on the rush and zipped a pass over to Ritchie on the left wing. Ritchie’s original offering was blocked but he followed the puck behind the net and batted it out to Krejci in front. Krejci’s in-tight shot produced a fat rebound and Smith finished it off for his sixth of the year.
The B’s had gone into the third period trailing 2-1 and started the stanza turning over pucks left and right. But they kept at it and managed to tie it up at 5:32. Charlie McAvoy took not one but two round-the-world tours of the Sabres’ zone. On his second one, he lost the puck briefly, regained it and threw it in front. After it went off a Sabre, Ritchie swiped it past goalie Linus Ullmark from a couple of feet out.
After Smith scored the goahead goal, the Sabres pulled Ullmark for the extra skater, but their hopes of ending the run of ignominy were at last snuffed out when Rasmus Ristolainen took a penalty in front of the B’s net with 25 seconds left in the game.
The day started off rather ominously for the B’s when Cassidy announced in a pregame press conference that Brad Marchand had been placed on the COVID protocol list.
Then things went from bad to worse when the game started. Connor Clifton went to the box for elbowing at 1:16 and, on the ensuing power play, the Sabres took a 1-0 lead on a Bruin gaffe. Dan Vladar, in his second NHL start, played the puck behind the net on a clear-in and had Jakub Zboril in front of him. He missed him and handed the puck right to Sam Reinhart, who simply had to step out in front and backhand the puck home for a 1-0 lead at 2:01.
There was shared responsibility on that one, said Cassidy.
“In fairness, it looks bad on him, but he fires the puck right past Zboril. You’ve got to be prepared to handle that as well,” said Cassidy. “Now on the PK, it’s a little more difficult where maybe (Zboril) thinks the goalie’s going to rim it. But if that’s the case, don’t present yourself. … I thought (Vladar) responded well from that. With a young guy, you don’t know if it will get in his head or park it. I thought he did a good job of parking it.”
Vladar made 25 saves to get his second victory in as many starts.
The B’s did tie it up at 11:41 of the second. On a delayed call against the Sabres, Grzelcyk wheeled high in the zone and used a Coyle screen to beat Ullmark with a wrister.
They could not maintain the momentum, however, and fell back down by a goal at 14:12 of the second. The Sabres kept the B’s hemmed in their zone until defenseman Henri Jokiharju flicked a wrister toward the net. The fortuitous rebound bounced to the left side where Kyle Okposo was there to knock it past Vladar’s outstretched stick and the B’s had their work cut out for them in the third.
The B’s, however, got the job done in the end.