BOSTON – At some point in Game 3, a switch flipped.
After the Boston Bruins appeared to fluster the Buffalo Sabres through Games 1 and 2, the Sabres found a way to turn the pressure back on the Bruins. In Game 4, that change manifested itself swiftly and destructively for Boston.
The Sabres jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first period and that bulge ultimately got to 6-0 in the third period on the way to a 6-1 win that puts the Sabres a win away from the second round and the Bruins a loss away from the offseason.
It happened fast and snowballed from there for the Sabres. Peyton Krebs scored 4:17 into the game, the first time the Sabres scored first in the series. While we wondered how they would do managing the game when doing that at last four games into the series, Josh Doan made it 2-0 with a goal that wasn’t a power play goal but might as well have been (it came two seconds after it ended) nearly three minutes later.
Zach Benson made it 3-0 after he took the puck away, feigned a pass across and drove the net to stuff it past Jeremy Swayman just 2:05 later. That goal got Bruins coach Marco Sturm to call timeout to get his team to regroup and perhaps heat-check Buffalo as well. It was just 5:09 after Benson’s goal that Bo Byram had a yawning net to fire on and buried past a diving Swayman for a 4-0 lead.
Four goals in a 10:07 span and Game 4 was all but over.
“I thought that first period was the best period we played all year,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “Puck pressure, scoring opportunities. As well as we’ve moved the puck and got the puck up ice. We didn’t spend much time in our end. It’s like you said, maybe the first period of the previous game, maybe not the best period, but these last five have been really solid.”
Twice the Sabres scored off Bruins turnovers. Two other times they generated Grade-A opportunities off them in the first period but missed out because Swayman made an incredible pad stop on Benson and another when Noah Östlund tried to force a pass to Benson instead of taking a shot against a, by then, beleaguered goaltender. That the game was only 4-0 after one period was a miracle. Buffalo had 19 shots on goal compared to the Bruins’ five and three of those came in the closing minute after a Power turnover that Alex Lyon was able to put aside.
The Sabres put boots to ass for 20 minutes and never looked back.
“I think we’re a super deep team and that’s our strength, but we’ve got to keep playing to it,” Byram said. “I don’t think there’s necessarily one line or one pair of D that’s been getting it done every night, it seems to be a group effort. I think that’s why we’ve been having success. Just line after line we keep coming. Yeah, it’s been a ton of fun.”
The second period was decidedly calmer, goal-wise, and was a bit more on edge for determining how the game would go. Even in a 4-0 game, the next goal can loom large because even now in the NHL those leads aren’t always automatic wins. If Buffalo gives up the next one with more than half the game left to go, things can get tight fast with the crowd back in the game. Meanwhile, making it 5-0 can help clear the building and leave the boobirds behind. Boston outshot Buffalo 10-4 in the second period which included killing off a hooking call against Jordan Greenway. That gave Lyon the opportunity to calm things down himself.
“You could feel they pushed hard in the second period,” Lyon said. “And sometimes it’s not always about trying to out-push them; sometimes it’s about accepting the push. You’re not going to be on your toes for 60 minutes; it’s just an unrealistic task. So, I thought we did a great job of keeping them to the outside. We had a great kill, big block by Stan, Timmer had a huge block, Tuchy had a huge block. So huge credit to the guys.”
The Bruins stepping up after getting stepped on in the first period could’ve given them some momentum, but the third period changed it up again when Beck Malenstyn and Alex Tuch scored 1:24 apart in the first six-and-a-half minutes to make it 6-0.
The Bruins were shellshocked.
Swayman looked long to the bench following Byram’s goal that made it 4-0 perhaps expecting to get the hook. He didn’t get pulled from the game until the third period after Tuch’s goal. While exiting the ice, he vented his frustrations with his teammates and coaches for hanging him out to dry again in the third after they’d mostly course-corrected in the second period despite the deficit. Who can blame him?
“Absolutely (loved him having that kind of fire), at least one guy (had it),” Bruins coach Marco Sturm said. “Felt bad for him. That’s why we kept him in there for a while, because he’s a battle. He wants to be in.”
While the Sabres talked about how this game was an example of how they can play when they’re rolling as a full unit, the Bruins echoed how frustrated and ashamed they were of playing like that in a playoff game at home and suddenly find themselves on the brink of elimination in Game 5 on Tuesday in Buffalo.
What’s stood out about how Games 3 and 4 played out is taking it in as a full picture of the Sabres understanding where the Bruins pressured them and stressed them through the first two games and continuing to tweak and adjust the ways in which they can move against them. Ultimately in Game 4, the tables they’d been slowly turning completely flipped.
“I just feel it was like the previous game,” Ruff said. “The next man was right there on every pass. I think we had good legs; we had good energy. When we have good energy, we get to places. Our feet were moving. I think that’s the biggest deal. Our feet were moving. We weren’t standing around. Our anticipation of where pucks were going was really good. We were back on top of them, so most of the passes they had to make had to go through us, and we created the turnovers that led to scoring opportunities.”
In usual playoff blowout fashion, there was message sending. In this game it involved Nikita Zadorov cross-checking Rasmus Dahlin out of the blue in the arm and taking a swing at him. That brought everyone together in the final five minutes.
Zadorov got a major and a game misconduct. Krebs and David Pastrňák each got four minutes for slashing and although Benson was announced for receiving a 10-minute misconduct for sparking a second scuffle with a swipe at Pastrňák, it’s since disappeared from the score sheet. Whether there will be further discipline for Zadorov or not, we’ll see, but we’ll find out how cool things can stay in Game 5 all the same.
“I understand the emotion of that because of the way the game went,” Ruff said. “You see that in playoff games. That type of raw emotion, it’s because a player’s so frustrated inside the game. There’s lots of banter back and forth inside the game. It’s not a play you want. I’m pretty sure if that’s the regular season that might even be a suspension. He could have easily broken Ras’ arm with the cross-check.”
Sean Kuraly spoiled Lyon’s bid for a shutout with 40 seconds to go, something that really irked Ruff after the game, but to skate out of Boston with a blowout win and being one win away from the Sabres getting beyond the first round of the playoffs for the first time since 2007 is huge. The Bruins, meanwhile, will be playing the role of the cornered animal: hurting, defensive, and ready to lash out to stay alive.
“We should be embarrassed because it was embarrassing,” Sturm said. “Guys know me and we’re going to talk about it and analyze this but at the end of the day, we have to move on too. Yeah, I am embarrassed and we all should be. We’re all pissed and we’ll talk about it but then we have to move on. As far as I know, we have to win four games to move on, so they got three so that means we still have a chance. I can cry about it whatever I want, but I also have to push my guys for the next game and make sure our intensity is going to be there.”