After a decade and a half of the Bruins feasting on the Buffalo Sabres, the roles look like they are now at long last reversed.
That’s certainly the way it looked on Saturday night in Buffalo, where the Bruins saw their losing streak reach five games (0-4-1) after they were dominated for long stretches of the game by the Sabres and lost 4-1.
The Sabres, who have now won eight in a row, jumped over the sinking, cement-shoed Bruins in the Atlantic Division standings by a point.
The game turned in the second period when the Sabres scored three goals and the B’s mustered just two shots on net.
The loss kicked off the five-game road trip that could very well put the B’s playoff hopes in jeopardy already if they can’t snap out of this malaise.
“We have periods where we play pretty well and periods when we don’t. We just have to stick a 60-minute game together. We showed in each game we can be successful and push teams back. We just have to be doing it more consistently,” Hampus Lindholm told reporters in Buffalo.
After the three-day Christmas break, the B’s arrived for this one without the benefit of a morning skate, which had to be a scrapped after they were delayed by weather coming out of Boston.
But that excuse went out the window with a decent opening period.
The B’s played an OK opening 20 minutes and came away with a 1-0 lead and it came from a welcome source – David Pastrnak. Elias Lindholm’s forecheck caused Bowen Byram to make a bad pass that Morgan Geekie picked off along the boards. Geekie made a quick backhand pass to Pastrnak, who did not play well in the B’s loss to Montreal before the break, and the sniper beat Ukka-Pekka Lukkonen with his 15th goal of the season at 11:56.
The B’s nearly took a two-goal lead shortly after that when Marat Khusnutdinov, out high in the zone, made a great pass to an open Sean Kuraly, who hit the crossbar.
Another good sign was that goalie Joonas Korpisalo at least appeared to be on his game. The Sabres outshot the B’s 13-9 in the first and there were some high danger chances in that baker’s dozen, but Korpisalo – pulled from his last start against Ottawa and carrying a sub-.900 save percentage most of the season – kept the Sabres off the board for the first 20 minutes.
But the second period was disastrous when the Sabres scored three times before the B’s even registered a shot.
The lead didn’t last long into the second, and just 3:12 into the second period the B’s were looking at a deficit.
It started with what looked like a promising play for the Bruins. Elias Lindholm sent a stretch pass for Geekie that went all the way to end boards and bounced out to Geekie. He elected not to shoot and take it around the net, but he turned it over and the B’s opportunity turned into a Sabre rush. From the right circle, Ryan McLeod beat Korpisalo to the far blocker side with a shot that may have deflected of Andrew Peeke’s stick at 1:39.
Buffalo took the lead just 93 seconds later. Alex Steeves turned the puck over on a breakout attempt. Tage Thompson’s long distance was deflected home by Peyton Krebs and the B’s were once again on the chase.
“If you look at their first goal, we got caught. We talked about how they were number one on the rush. We didn’t want to give them that. We give up the puck in the offensive zone and it ended up in our net,” coach Marco Sturm told NESN. “The second one, we had the puck, too, and we couldn’t get it out. They picked it off and it went in our net. I think it was just mental breakdowns we have to correct.”
Then, when Mattias Samuelsson’s seeing-eye shot found its way behind Korpisalo at 7:54, the B’s found themselves in a two-goal hole that they never escaped.
What else could go wrong? Well, the B’s hadn’t taken any penalties and Viktor Arvidsson rectified that situation with 1:33 left in the period when his stick rode up and clipped Samuelsson for a double minor.
The B’s got to the horn without giving up another one. But it was an ugly 20 minutes. They were outshot 11-2 and they were looking at another 2:27 of penalty kill time to start the third.
They killed off the rest of it at the start of the third but they still had a long way to climb out off their hole.
The B’s had one last chance to get in the game with a late power play but they could not get another past Luukkonen. Josh Norris ended it with an empty-netter.
