The Bruins have once again rebounded, and once again face their old friends from Buffalo
Just the Facts
- The Time: 7pm PT
- The Place: KeyBank Center, Buffalo, NY
- Place to Watch: NESN, MSG-Buffalo, SportsNet
- Place to Listen: 98.5 The Sports Hub
- An Opposing Viewpoint: Die By The Blade
Know Your Enemy
- The Sabres are 18-26-5, with 41 points in the standings. They are at the very bottom of the Eastern Conference standings.
- The Sabres may not be very good, but Tage Thompson sure is. He’s got 40 points in 44 games, and leads the team in scoring with 22 goals.
- Jason Zucker has been the power play machine for the Sabres; he’s got a team-lead in power play goals with 9.
- The Sabres power play and penalty kill are…bad. Just bad. They sit at 27th and 21st in those categories respectively.
- The Sabres have three goalies with one very important factor: they are all really bad right now. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Devon Levi, and James Reimer all have a sub-.900 SV%.
Game Preview
We’re rapidly approaching the 4 Nations Tournament, and the Atlantic is still a mess.
While Florida and Toronto are rugby-passing the 1st place spot back and forth, the 3rd place spot has become an active war zone with Boston, Ottawa, and Tampa vie for space. All three have both coughed up games they probably shouldn’t have, are buoyed by unbelievable performances by certain players, and have also managed some key victories when it was called for against good teams. It’s beginning to feel like this particular battle will last right up until the end of the season.
Which brings us to Buffalo, who has been painfully, agonizingly Buffalo. 4-6-0 in their last 10, and coming hot off the heels of a western road trip that saw them lose 3 of 4. The suffering in Buffalo appears to be incapable of stopping, and teams throughout the league are picking through the bones of this roster looking for something juicy to bring back home come the trade deadline.
That said, Boston’s still gotta actually beat them to keep pace.
Buffalo’s wins over this 10 game stretch play to their strengths; using their speed and transition ability to overwhelm their opponent and get them off their game quick enough that the other team can’t respond with goals of their own, or can’t keep up with their scoring. This season, that kind of gameplan has flummoxed Boston, whose most frustrating attributes generally rise to the surface during games like that.
If there’s another way the B’s can pull some points out of this one, it would be the depth once again meeting their stars (or, at this point, Star singular) on the scoresheet. David Pastrnak’s absolutely taken off over the past few weeks, but eventually he will return to only having an A-/B+ game where he merely walks away with A Goal or An Assist. The rest of the team has spent enough time watching his line dazzle their way to victory; it’s time to make the rest of the squad a danger to score, if at all possible. Testing any one of their goalies and their frankly very poorly coached defense is paramount to beating these Sabres, and they can’t let one player do all the work.
Do that? Boston can hopefully come away with a W.
We’ll see you there to find out if they do!