The Sabres won their fourth straight game and seventh in eight 6-3 against the Bruins in a game that would’ve ended much differently in December.
BUFFALO — The Buffalo Sabres are providing a lot of material for the most cynical fans within its base and frankly, that’s OK.
In a game that started abysmally against the Boston Bruins in which they handed them a 2-0 lead after the first period in the latest example of an effort that smacked of the team that thought it would be easy, they did something that almost certainly wouldn’t have happened as recently as December or January: They self-corrected between periods.
For the final 40 minutes, the Sabres outscored the Bruins 6-1 on the way to a 6-3 win, their fourth straight victory, seventh in the past eight games, and ninth in the past 12. What a time to get hot, eh?
“Not looking toward next season, looking toward next game,” Alex Tuch said. “I think that’s something that we’re really focused on, is finishing the right way and not worrying about it. Not worrying about what’s going to happen in the offseason or anything like that. It’s just next-game mentality, and I think that’s been key.”
Tage Thompson had his second hat trick of the season and upped his season total to 43 goals. Tuch and Rasmus Dahlin each had a goal and an assist, and Jason Zucker also added a goal. Bo Byram and Peyton Krebs each had two assists as well while Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen got his first start since a disastrous game on the road in Philadelphia and made 18 saves.
Getting a complete effort in an incomplete game that featured heroics by their top players and role players handling their business? A plan coming together now while hanging on a microscopically thin thread of being in the playoff hunt (despite the very deep unlikeliness of that happening) continues to provide encouragement for the future even if your natural reaction to it is to say that it’s a “typical Sabres” phenomenon.
“I think first and foremost, we wanted to start playing the right way,” Tuch said. “I think we came out, and when you start winning games, you can start becoming a little complacent, think that the game is just going to happen in front of you. You just got to go out there and work, and that’s when the production comes and that’s when the wins start coming… Good bounce back. It was really mature of our group, and I’m proud of our group that we played the last 40.”
More ahead from a game that yet again featured a dominant performance from the top line and earned credit for the role players…
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It’s funny the way the thought process goes throughout a game. The entirety of the first period for the Sabres saw them passing up open looks to try and make one more pass to do something else with the opportunity in front of them only to see either a shot not happen or the puck getting turned over.
The Bruins provided ample looks throughout the game that only got worse for starting goalie Joonas Korpisalo as the game went on, but the Sabres passed on them, literally, and they wound up twice being in the back of their own net. One particular turnover in the neutral zone by J-J Peterka was especially brutal since he turned it over to David Pastrnak of all people who then wisely didn’t put the play offside as a teammate raced to tag up and then set up Morgan Geekie for a goal that made it 2-0.
“I think they all understand, now,” Lindy Ruff said. “They’ve got a real good understanding of the quality of chances you give up if you don’t get pucks deep, or if you make a play at the end of your shift. And then, what compounds it is if you make that play with the other team’s best players on the ice, makes it even worse, and that’s what we did.”
The Bruins’ first goal saw more smarts from Pastrnak as he wound up to rip a slap shot from the circle but pulled it down when the Sabres surged out to get in front of the shot which left Elias Lindholm room to drive to the net for a pass and bunt it by Luukkonen.
It wasn’t a full-on calamity in the first, but it ran completely against everything Thompson spoke about after Saturday’s game against Tampa Bay that worked so well for them in that win.
“I think sometimes we’ve gotten offtrack and kind of gotten bored of playing that simple style of hockey, and then we get too cute, and then usually let teams back into the game. But I thought this last stretch we’ve really matured and really committed to playing a complete game for an entire 60 minutes.”
The irony of looking back on what he said and then seeing how the Sabres performed in the first period was startling. If you’ve been paying that close attention to things all season, a regression like that after an impressive win wasn’t surprising so much as it was typical of how they played in the first half of the season.
“I think we’ve had a pretty bad habit of when you get behind in games, obviously, you’ve got to fight your way back and we need to score, and that’s sometimes when you compound mistakes, try to force plays that aren’t there to try to create offense, and you ended up digging yourself a bigger hole,” Thompson said on Sunday. “I think we knew if we just played the right way, the goals would come for us. I think we know, we’ve proven to ourselves we can score. So, I think it’s just not getting bored playing the right way when you don’t see results right away. I think, yeah, I like the commitment to battling and finding a way to gut out a win tonight.”
It was easy to see it in general but glaring to see it after Saturday’s game. In the first half of the season, that kind of start to a game would’ve led to it continuing for at least another period and then the opposing team had the pleasure and ran away with a win.
It was Thompson who got the comeback started in the first when Byram’s shot from outside towards the net that had a pack of players swarmed around Zach Benson saw him get a stick on it and while a pair of Bruins players convened on Benson, Thompson was left all alone for the rebound to bury. Too easy for him and further proof why Benson being the mucker on that line with Thompson and Jiri Kulich just works.
“I think that line has had some chemistry,” Ruff said. “I think the fact that Kulich’s game is really back toward where it needs to be. It’s freed him up to take off. You don’t get a breakaway like that if you’re playing center in your own end. There’s a lot of pluses to being on the wing, and Kuli’s done a really nice job. And I thought the other part is Benson had a heck of a night – with the puck, down low. So, they’ve got good chemistry, that line.”
The breakaway Ruff referenced came in the third period when Kulich sprung Thompson on that gave Buffalo a 5-3 lead. A tape-to-tape zipper from his own zone to Thompson who had a breakaway from the blue line in. A couple of dekes later, it’s a backhand roof shot over Korpisalo for his second of the game and helped to set the game on cruise control for the final 14-plus minutes. But there was game between Thompson’s first two goals and it was still up for grabs.
Tuch’s goal 3:14 after Thompson’s first made it 2-2, but a Peterka penalty for holding gave the Bruins a power play in which Old Friend Casey Mittelstadt banged home a rebound that made it 3-2 Boston. Pastrnak set that one up snapping a shot from a sharp angle that kicked off Luukkonen’s leg pad right in front to Mittelstadt whose stick wasn’t tied up. The little things.
Less than two minutes later, Dahlin’s toe-drag and snipe eluded Korpisalo which made it 3-3 as the game headed to the third. At 1:59 of the third, Zucker’s 21st of the season came when his shot as he raced up the left wing went off the tip of Korpisalo’s glove, floated into the air behind him and into the net for a 4-3 Sabres lead.
Then came Thompson’s breakaway to essentially put it away nearly four minutes later. He then got to cap the hat trick with an empty netter for his 43rd goal of the season and 175th of his career putting him a mere 720 goals behind the new all-time leading goal scorer Alex Ovechkin.
“No, it’s not human,” Thompson said of scoring 895 goals. “I think—especially in today’s game—it’s just beyond incredible. Woke up from my nap and was on social media, saw it all over the place. Unreal accomplishment, and to be able to say that I’m playing well while it’s occurred is pretty special.”
Thompson said he’s looked to Ovechkin to model a lot of what he does on the ice for his own game, and it makes a lot of sense given his ability to bury shots on the power play and his elite level ability to shoot the puck, period. But now he’s four goals shy of matching his career-high of 47 and seven short of 50 with six games left to play. If he keeps playing the way he has for the past month, especially the way his past two games have gone, getting to 50 isn’t unrealistic.
“I think when you set personal goals for yourself, once you hit them, you kind of just keep adjusting them,” Thompson said. “I obviously hit one of them (Saturday) night, and I keep raising the bar and seeing how far you can go. Yeah, it’s definitely a goal of mine, and we’ll see if I can get there.”
Although the goals get the attention and the love, Buffalo’s fourth line of Noah Östlund, Beck Malenstyn and Sam Lafferty did their job about as well as you could ask a line in that role to do. Malenstyn was effective with his speed and checking. Östlund was smart, positionally sound and not a drag on defense. Lafferty, meanwhile, was dominating on the forecheck and frustrated Bruins puck carriers in their own zone throughout the game.
“I thought they were really, on a whole, the best line when it came to generating positive energy, getting the pucks in, creating opportunities,” Ruff said. “They kind of set the tone for us and got us some traction, even in the first period with a couple of shifts.“
It’s been a challenging year for Lafferty, no doubt, but the way he played on Sunday night exemplified why he was an offseason target. He was relentless on the wall in tying pucks and players up deep in their own end and it allowed the Sabres to tire the Bruins out. When it was time for the fourth line to swap out, the next lines were able to take advantage due to his grinding play. It’s tough that we haven’t seen that more often this season, but that goes for a lot of things team-wide, too.
In the end, the Sabres staved off actual playoff elimination for another day and with Carolina coming to town on Tuesday night they’re going to need to not have a first period like they did on Sunday to deal with them. They’re virtually fated to miss the playoffs for the 14th straight year, but that we’re headed into the 77th game of the season and they’re not officially out yet is impressive in the oddest, most frustrating way.
Yeah, yeah, they want to play important games in March and April, we know, but when you think about how long this team sat last in the Eastern Conference and now three other teams have been officially eliminated ahead of them (Boston, Philadelphia, and now Pittsburgh), it’s cruelly amusing. That they’re also helping Lindy Ruff close in on 900 wins (Sunday’s win was No. 898 for him) gives them another goal to aim for this season.