While the Boston crowd was one thing, Buffalo now faces a new challenge in Montreal’s Bell Centre. It’ll surely be the loudest road atmosphere they’ve played in this season – or in their careers, for many Sabres – so a strong start would go a long way.
The Sabres scored two early goals in Game 1 and allowed two early ones in Game 2. In a series with two potent rush offenses, chasing multi-goal deficits is a recipe for failure.
“We’ve got to come out, and we’ve got to be really hard to play against, especially in the first 10 minutes of the first period in the Bell Centre,” Tuch said. “Such an, honestly, amazing atmosphere, passionate fanbase. They feed off a lot of energy with them, so we’ve got to try to take the crowd out of it right away.”
The Sabres turned their season around exactly five months ago on Dec. 9. They’ve suffered only two other four-goal losses in that span and followed both with fairly dominant winning streaks. That, plus their 3-0 road record these playoffs, gives plenty of reason to believe in this team as the series crosses the border.
“The whole year, we’ve answered the call,” Ruff said. “We had a couple stretches – even after our 10-game winning streak, we played a terrible game in Columbus, and we bounced back with real good hockey. So, really just reset, refocus. Let’s take the temperature down a little bit knowing that we can all be better.”
Here’s more from Saturday’s practice.
