BUFFALO, N.Y. — After the Buffalo Sabres finished their west coast trip with a back-and-forth overtime loss to the Anaheim Ducks, Lindy Ruff was already worried about the dreaded first game back home after a long trip. And through two periods against the Boston Bruins on Wednesday night, Ruff’s worst fears were playing out.
The Sabres weren’t sharp with the puck and missed on a few prime scoring chances. They trailed 2-1 heading into the second intermission due to some glaring mistakes, including Alex Tuch losing a puck battle at the defensive blue line that led to Boston’s second goal.
“Those first two periods are probably our poorest periods of the last three months,” Ruff said.
And yet, just like on Sunday in Anaheim, the Sabres found themselves with a lead late in the third period. They showed they can flip a game in a hurry. This time, it took until early in the third period when Zach Benson, who has come through in big moments a lot lately, picked Mason Lohrei’s pocket at the blue line and broke in to score a goal. Right after Benson scored, Lohrei cross-checked him from behind into the net, which led Beck Malenstyn to jump in and start a scrum.
“Never love getting cross-checked from behind,” Benson said. “But that’s sometimes the price you got to pay. And you know, yeah, I’d definitely do it again.”
That put a jolt into the sold-out crowd, and Lohrei ended up with a two-minute penalty for cross-checking. Just 33 seconds into that power play, Jason Zucker scored his second power-play goal of the game, finishing a feed from Tage Thompson in front of the net.
But just like they did on Sunday, the Sabres couldn’t hold onto that lead. With six minutes left in regulation, Casey Mittelstadt won a wall battle against Josh Doan to keep the Bruins’ offensive possession alive. Then a shot from the point took a weird bounce off the end wall, and Mittelstadt was there to capitalize.
“Crazy bounce, but sometimes the crazy stuff happens to you when you don’t play well,” Ruff said. “Even though we played a good third period, sometimes the payoff is something bad will happen to you and it happened.”
The Sabres ended up with a standings point but blew a chance at two in overtime. Ryan McLeod gave David Pastrnak too easy an entry into the zone, and then Alex Tuch left Pavel Zacha open for a shot that he sent right through Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen’s five hole. It was a series of avoidable errors, much like the early portion of the game was for Buffalo.
“You’re playing a team that’s battling as they can to stay in the playoff picture,” Ruff said. “They won more battles. I don’t think that has anything to do with sluggish. That has a lot to do with willpower and making sure you win your battles.”
The good news is the Sabres are still in first place in the division with 96 points and are three points clear of the Tampa Bay Lightning, who have two games in hand. They are also 11 points ahead of the Islanders, the first team out of the playoff picture at the moment. But the Sabres are beyond the point of wanting to just clinch a spot in the playoffs. Home ice advantage will matter, and the Sabres are currently tied for first place in the Eastern Conference.
But beyond the standings, the Sabres also want to be entering the playoffs with their game in the right place. They have points in six straight games, but they don’t want the habit of blowing late leads to creep into their game.
“We’re losing no confidence in this room,” Benson said. “We’re a confident team, up one, down one, tied. We’re a confident team no matter what. Unfortunately it’s happened back-to-back games, but it hasn’t happened much this year and we’ll definitely fix that.”
Here are a few more thoughts from Buffalo’s 4-3 loss.
1. Rasmus Dahlin’s fiancée, Carolina Matovac, was in attendance for her first game of the season. She was able to return to Buffalo this week after spending the last eight months home in Sweden recovering from an emergency heart transplant she received over the summer. Matovac went into heart failure while the two were vacationing in France, needed life-saving CPR and was put on life support before receiving the transplant. Carolina was pregnant at the time and the couple lost their unborn child.
Matovac’s condition had been weighing on Dahlin while he tried to continue playing an NHL season all the way across the world. In November, Dahlin took a leave of absence to return to Sweden to be with Carolina while she recovered. He also took some extra time during the NHL’s Christmas break to spend time with her. Recently, Matovac passed some tests that allowed her to travel to Buffalo. During the first period, the Sabres showed her on the Jumbotron and the home fans welcomed her back with a rousing ovation.
“Unbelievable, the support we’ve had for a long time now,” Dahlin said. “Getting this today, it was special, for sure.”
Dahlin wasn’t quite himself in this game; he was on the ice for three of the Bruins’ goals. But since he returned from his leave of absence in November, Dahlin has been the Sabres’ best player and one of the best defensemen in the league. He’s fifth among defensemen in points during that stretch, and the Sabres have outscored teams 60-39 during his five-on-five minutes.
2. Conor Timmins returned to the Sabres lineup on Wednesday night for the first time since breaking his leg on Dec. 18. Buffalo’s blue line is a lot more crowded than when he got injured, but it’s clear his path to the lineup is his role on the penalty kill. Despite missing more than three months, Timmins still has the fourth-most penalty-kill time this season among Buffalo’s defensemen. As well as Zach Metsa has played in a third-pair role lately, he doesn’t kill penalties. And after the Sabres allowed the Ducks to go three-for-four on the power play on Sunday, Ruff wanted to get that group back on track. He was happy with what he got out of Timmins.
“He was rock-solid,” Ruff said. “We gave him a little extra time. I thought he skated well. Every puck decision he made I thought was real good. Got the puck down the ice penalty killing, made the right play, got pucks out of the zone. Played like he hadn’t missed a day.”
3. The Sabres made some adjustments on the power play and they paid off. Jack Quinn was on the first unit, which allowed the Sabres to move Thompson around more than usual. They scored on two of their three power-play chances, and both goals came from Thompson making a play to set up Zucker at the front of the net.
Thompson showed at the Olympics that he can be more than just a one-timer threat on the power play, and the Sabres might finally be figuring out a way to take advantage of that. Between the power play going two-for-three and the penalty kill going two-for-two, this was an encouraging night for Buffalo’s special teams.
