Following a Tuesday road victory, the Boston Bruins have snatched the home-ice advantage away from the Buffalo Sabres in their Eastern Conference first-round series.
That means the intense playoff feeling is alive and well as the scene shifts to Boston on Thursday night for Game 3 of the best-of-seven series.
“I feel like it was nasty from the first shift, from the first game,” Bruins defenseman Nikita Zadorov said after Tuesday’s physical battle which featured 94 penalty minutes, including 72 in the third period alone.
“It’s playoff emotions and intensity. It’s always going to be up there.”
First-year Bruins coach Marco Sturm was not completely dissatisfied with his team’s Game 1 performance, outside of Buffalo’s third-period rally to snag a 4-3 win.
But on Tuesday, the Bruins were 4-2 winners, responding to the loss with a rock-solid effort in front of goaltender Jeremy Swayman, who boasts a .932 save percentage through two games in the series.
Viktor Arvidsson netted two goals, including the opener of Boston’s three-goal second period that built a lead it would never relinquish. Morgan Geekie and Arvidsson’s linemate Pavel Zacha also scored.
“We did a lot of good things. We played our style of hockey, I would say definitely more than Game 1,” Sturm said. “Overall, it was a good game, but at the end of the day, it was only one game. … We’re gonna regroup, fly home and try to do the same thing at home.”
For the second-line trio of former Sabre Casey Mittelstadt, Zacha and Arvidsson, the strong effort followed a challenge from Sturm to get back to their hard-nosed style of play, matching that of the team. They delivered.
“They just needed a poke, that’s all,” Sturm said. “Knowing ‘Arvy’ very well, he’s a guy who takes it very seriously and takes it to heart. I knew he was going to have a big night.”
The Bruins will be looking for a repeat type of effort as the series resumes. Meanwhile, the Sabres have questions to answer if they want to get back into it.
The biggest is the team’s goaltending situation, as Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen was pulled in favor of Alex Lyon after allowing four goals on 20 shots.
“Just felt that there may be a chance we’re going to need (Lyon),” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said of the pull. “May play him next game, but just get him a period because he hasn’t played in a while.”
Lyon had not seen game action since April 4.
The second goal against Luukkonen was Geekie’s backhand lob from beyond center ice. If the momentum had not been on Boston’s side yet, that one turned it all the way.
“In those situations, if there’s a bad bounce, bad goal, you kind of have to stop the bleeding,” Luukkonen said. “Wasn’t able to do that (Tuesday).”
Buffalo did make things interesting in the waning minutes of regulation. Back-to-back goals by defenseman Bowen Byram and Peyton Krebs cut the deficit to 4-2 with 4:52 left.
A major reason for the struggles was another scoreless power-play night. Despite an overall shot advantage for the second straight game in the series at 35-27, the man-up unit was 0-for-5 on Tuesday and dropped to 0-for-31 over the last nine games.
“I think we’ll have to tweak some things,” Ruff said. “I think if you look at the last power play, we went with a little bit of a different look. … We had a scheme that we thought maybe would work a little bit better. I like the amount of shots we generated.”
