Bruins vs. Sabres 12/29/19 RECAP: Bruins win a tighter 3-2 game than it looked, but at a cost.

First Period:

Hey, did you like how the B’s and Sabres kinda traded opportunities back and forth but the Sabres largely controlled play minus one really good shift from the first line that got the B’s on top?

Wanna see ‘em do it again? This time, David Pastrnak got the go-ahead from Marchand and Bergeron to do his thing. 1-0 B’s!

Always count your blessings that you get to see Patrice Bergeron do things.

And with that, the period was just about over, and the 2nd began!...but without a

2nd Period:

Unlike last game where the Bruins woke up and took further control of the game from here, the Sabres responded in a huge way; getting shots all over the place, and even worse, taking full advantage of the lack of play. And got insanely lucky, as a 2-on-1 was initially stopped by Rask, but Zdeno Chara stuck his stick behind him to try and stuff the puck between his pads, and accidentally knocked the puck in the net. 1-1 B’s.

C’mon, big guy.

And the B’s kinda let the Sabres do what they wanted right up until the end of the period.

3rd Period:

THE PERIOD OF JAKE DEBRUSK DOING THINGS! It started with a bizarre sequence that got Johan Larsson put on 4 minutes of penalty timeout when it was initially a 5-on-3, and he capitalized on both. The first was a tip from a Steven Kampfer shot...

And 19 seconds later, DeBrusk’s shot had eyes on it, and it managed to find the centimeters between the sealed post and Ullmark’s pad. 3-1 Bruins!

And you’d think that’s where the Sabres’ spirit would be broken and they’d just roll over and drop dead, right?

WRONG.

The Sabres came out ready to destroy everything. Everything. And they got close, as the Bruins let the Sabres hang around just a little too long in front of Tuukka Rask, a net-man scramble occured, and Curtis Lazar picked up the loose change. 3-2 B’s

From there, the Sabres put the B’s under siege, but the defense held strong, and even while being down a man for almost the entire final four minutes of the game, the B’s came away with a win!

Game Notes:

• Rask’s night? Pretty good, all things considered. He had a lot of rubber heading his way, finished with .923 SV% and realistically...he should’ve only let up one goal. It’s Forehand first, Zdeno! You know this! You’ve been playing this game for 20 years you gotta be-
• David Pastrnak could realistically finish 2019 with 30 goals. Think about that.
• Connor Clifton did not complete tonight’s game thanks to an undisclosed upper body injury, which means...a player is absolutely getting called up. Vaakanainen is currently out on injury, so it’ll probably be Lauzon. Maybe Zboril? Who knows.
• Bruins got once again filled at 5v5 outside of the first line and Anders Bjork, especially the non-first pairing defenders. An influx of youth should help that but man...
• Brett Ritchie and David Backes might as well be interchangeable. They’re slow, roster leeches, generally incapable of creating offense at this moment in time, if things go south for any protracted length of time they will be the first pair of indictments placed on Don Sweeney in a long-winded post in the comments I have a 50/50 pool on having to hide due to a community guideline violation and most importantly I am very tired of them getting ice time and contributing nothing with it. One or both have to get something going or the need of 2nd line RW might just become “RW in general”.
• Jake Debrusk got benched and probably an earful for his sloppy beginning to the game, and spent the rest of the game trying to make up for it. I’d say he did a pretty good job of it with 2 goals!

The Bruins take a day for travel, then are back at it against the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday at 1pm EST. We’ll see you there!