Sabres Managing Excitement After Comeback Win With “One Game At A Time” Approach

The Buffalo Sabres seemed stymied by the Boston Bruins defensive game plan in Game 1 of their first-round series for two-and-a-half periods, but with time running out, the Sabres urgency increased, the Bruins retreated into a defensive shell around goalie Jeremy Swayman, and that allowed Buffalo to wrest control of the game. Tage Thompson tied the game on a pair of tallies, Mattias Samuelsson put the Sabres into the lead, and Alex Tuch scored the game-winner into an empty net, all within 6:46 in a 4-3 victory at KeyBank Center on Sunday night. 

The crowd was extremely loud and boisterous even during warmups for the first playoff game in 15 years, and the rafters shook with a deafening crescendo of cheers during the Sabres late rally. Less than 24 hours later, the club did not practice and is attempting to maintain their level of excitement, while at the same time trying to stay composed.

"We met this morning, and we went through the game and areas we thought we're pretty good at and a couple areas we'd like to improve. (We) talked about putting this game away and moving on to the next one, knowing that it's a desperate situation for (Boston), Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff said. "No team really wants to go down two games to none, and we'd like to put them in that situation."

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The Bruins played the game they need to play to beat a more offensively talented Buffalo squad, positionally disciplined defensively, and relying on goalie Jeremy Swayman to make the big saves. That was the case through two periods, as the Sabres outshot Boston 27-13. The Bruins failed to take advantage of some early shakiness from Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen in his first playoff start, and failed on some of their best scoring chances, as David Pastrnak was stymied by UPL on two breakaways. 

“We understand how they play. They've had a lot of success with it. We understand how we play," Ruff said.  "I thought maybe the first two periods, we were just a little bit slow getting there, but we really want to focus on our game. We know what the strength of their game is, and they know what the strength of ours is. And we feel that the longer we can stay with our game, the better the chances we can win a hockey game."

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