The Buffalo Sabres put the finishing touches on their first playoff victory since 2007, jumping out to an early 2-0 first-period lead and pulling away in a 4-1 series-clinching victory over the Boston Bruins at TD Garden on Friday. Alex Tuch and Mattias Samuelsson put Buffalo in front early, and after David Pastrnak cut the lead in half in the middle frame, the Sabres pulled away in the third with Zach Benson scoring an important insurance marker and Josh Norris scoring into the empty net. Alex Lyon was once again steady between the pipes with 25 stops, as Buffalo swept all three road games in Boston, by a combined score of 13-3.
The game was marred with an ugly incident late in the third period, when Sabres pest Zach Benson slew-footed Charlie McAvoy, an offense that ired the Bruins blueliner to the point that he took a baseball swing that could earn McAvoy a tryout with the Red Sox. Benson was penalized a minor and McAvoy a major and game misconduct, but thus far the NHL’s Department of Player Safety has not announced an hearing for supplementary discipline.
“I said, we are going to win the series. We’re going to win the game. We’ve got to do some things better, but we’re going to win the game.” Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff said to his club on Friday morning. “(Playing well in Boston) meant everything in this series for sure. You look at them coming into our building and winning two games, us coming into their building and winning three games, (I’d) really like to grab a hold of how energized our building is and use that to an advantage and win hockey games. Would have really liked this game to have been in Buffalo. It wasn’t, but it would have been special to have this game there.”
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The Sabres did show at times some signs of inexperience in the series with Boston, including an anemic man advantage that enabled Boston to play more physically and on the edge. Buffalo got big offensive production from top forwards Alex Tuch (4 goals, 3 assists), and Tage Thompson (2 goals, 5 assists), as well as unexpected contributions from Peyton Krebs (6 points) and Bowen Byram (3 goals), but they went 1 for 24 on the power play, something that will have to rectified if they hope to advance further in the postseason.
Buffalo now awaits the winner of the Tampa Bay Lightning – Montreal Canadiens series as their second-round opponent. The Lightning forced a seventh and deciding game in Tampa on Sunday night with a 1-0 victory on Friday at the Bell Centre, with Gage Gonsalves scoring at 9:03 of overtime. Andrei Vasilevskiy stood on his head with a 30-save effort, making a number of remarkable saves to keep Tampa Bay alive.
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