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BUFFALO, N.Y. — It wasn’t quite a Picasso by Boston, in the end.
But the Bruins got the job done on Tuesday with a 4-2 victory over the Buffalo Sabres, tying their first-round playoff series at 1-1 as the series shifts for Boston.
The Bruins, who let a two-goal lead slip late in Game 1 Sunday, stormed ahead in Game 2 with four goals in the first 41 minutes. Viktor Arvidsson scored two, Pavel Zacha another, and Morgan Geekie added his second of the postseason, silencing the crowd.
“That goal, when you start on the road, is to get one of two,” Geekie said. “We gave ourselves a chance to win both, and unfortunately let the first one slip away, and we learned from that. It’s huge … and super important to get one and go back home to play in front of our fans.”
Goaltender Jeremy Swayman bounced back for Boston, as well, making 34 saves. He posted two scoreless periods in Game 2, adding to his total of four for the series.
“The series doesn’t start until you win one on the road. And that’s important for us,” Swayman said. “We thought we had a really good chance to finish it out last game, too. So, I think that we fixed a lot of great things and took positives and really stayed in the moment. That’s the biggest thing for our group.”
Bruins coach Marco Sturm didn’t make any lineup changes for Game 2, convinced that his squad was prepared to bounce back as is.
“They played their way. They played to our identity,” Sturm said. “Let’s put it that way. That was Bruins hockey from start to finish and why we put them away. We played more physical. That’s something they wanted to do and get better on our forecheck, but also protecting a little bit more … and be a bit more aggressive.”
It looked like that aggressiveness would lead to an easy win, but Buffalo made things interesting again in the final frame, scoring two pair in the final seven minutes. But this time, Boston smothered the Sabres’ attempts at heroics to make the series a best-of-five from here.
Defenseman Bowen Byram got the Sabres on the board with a wrist shot that spoiled Swayman’s shutout bid. Then, with the Sabres’ net empty, Peyton Krebs buried a rebounding puck that teammate Rasmus Dahlin fired off the post behind Swayman.
Sturm had to call a timeout to settle his group down, although it seemed like it was Swayman imploring upon Sturm to settle things down.
“I think it was a momentum shift,” Swayman said. “I knew we wouldn’t have a TV timeout after the goal call, so it was just important to get everyone to take a breath. I thought the momentum shifted a little, and kudos to my group for responding extremely well.”
The first period was a back-and-forth affair riddled with penalties — and non-calls — that brought out animated reactions from players parading to the box and coaches behind the bench. But after 20 physical minutes it was still scoreless.
And then Boston opened the floodgates.
A backhander from Arvidsson beat Ukka-Pekka Luukkonen to open the scoring, and then the Bruins receive a fortunate bounce. Geekie sent a floater on net from center ice that Luukkonen misread as it passed him and into the net.
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“I don’t think I ever will [score] like that again,” he said. “Honestly, I just tried to dump it in, and it was a lucky bounce. You hate to see those go in, regardless of who it is. You just try to have the mentality of putting pucks on net.”
When Buffalo’s Tage Thompson was called for interference late in the period, Zacha gave the Bruins a 3-0 lead. Arvidsson’s second tally came in the first minute of the third.
Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff stuck with Luukkonen to start the third. But faced with a 4-0 deficit, he eventually pulled Luukkonen in favor of Alex Lyon.
Sturm mentioned his second line of Zacha, Arvidsson and Casey Middlestadt as needing to improve after Game 1. They answered the bell with a combined three goals and five points in Game 2.
“I called those guys out for a reason,” Sturm said. “They just needed a [push].”
The intensity ramped up once Boston was so far ahead — for obvious reasons. When Charlie McAvoy laid a low hit on Beck Malenstyn, that encouraged Logan Stanley and Mark Kastelic to drop the gloves. The game got further out of hand when Nikita Zadorov hit Zach Benson and Alex Tuch came barreling in with a response. That let a mele of scrums that took several minutes to break up.
Buffalo now can get set for what’s to come in Boston … all the while knowing the bad blood could amplify.
“Every game you play,” Buffalo’s Zach Benson said, “you hate each other more.”
