BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Bruins arrived at KeyBank Center on Sunday for Game 1 of a first-round series against the Sabres, and the building finally had postseason hockey again after a 15-year wait. Buffalo had not played a playoff game since April 26, 2011, while Boston was walking into a series with 11 Stanley Cup playoff rounds won since that night.
That contrast hangs over the first matchup. The Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011 and reached the Stanley Cup Finals again in 2013 and 2019 during the years Buffalo spent outside the bracket. Marco Sturm, in his first season as Bruins coach, set the tone Friday by saying Boston knew how it had to play and would be ready to go. He also described his club as bigger, stronger and more physical, while making clear the Bruins planned to go after the Sabres if they could do it smartly.
Josh Doan said the Sabres had heard the comments, but he did not sound interested in turning them into a side issue. Buffalo, he said Saturday, would stick to its game plan and let the series play out, with no real response coming from the room. That was the message from a team that ended the NHL’s longest active playoff drought at 14 years and won the Atlantic Division by three points over the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The numbers show why this series feels tight even with all the history around it. Boston finished 45-27-10 and went 5-3-2 in its last 10 games. Buffalo finished 50-23-9 and closed 6-3-1. The Bruins also owned a 3-1 edge in the regular season meetings, including a 4-3 overtime win on March 25, a result that gives them one more recent point of reference before the games start to matter for real.
Boston’s offense still runs through David Pastrnak, who finished with 100 points, including 29 goals and 71 assists, and reached the mark for the fourth straight year. Morgan Geekie followed with 68 points. Buffalo has its own high-end production in Tage Thompson, who finished with 40 goals and 41 assists after a 44-goal season a year earlier, and Rasmus Dahlin, who was second on the club with 74 points and ranked sixth among NHL defensemen in scoring. The matchup may also turn on the margins: Boston had 978 penalty minutes to Buffalo’s 797, while the Bruins’ penalty kill was 76.9 percent and the Sabres’ was 81.9 percent. Boston also won 53.1 percent of faceoffs, compared with 45.9 percent for Buffalo.
What comes next is simple enough to say and hard to survive: the series will test whether Boston’s recent postseason habit still travels, or whether Buffalo’s return to the stage can hold up against a team that has spent more than a decade getting chances like this and usually taking them.
