Bowen Byram and Peyton Krebs scored for the Sabres, who are the No. 1 seed from the Atlantic Division and rallied for a 4-3 win in Game 1 on Sunday. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen allowed four goals on 19 shots before he was replaced by Alex Lyon 16 seconds into the third period. Lyon saved all seven shots he faced in relief.
“They came out hard. They were forechecking a lot harder than they were last game,” Byram said. “That’s not an excuse. We knew they were going to come out hard, but I think it just kind of took us a while to get going again. We’ve got to find a way to start games and take it to them in the first 10 (minutes).”
The best-of-7 series is tied 1-1. Game 3 will be at TD Garden in Boston on Thursday (7 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, truTV, TNT, NESN, MSG-B, TVAS2, SN360).
After a scoreless first period, Arvidsson gave Boston a 1-0 lead at 4:54 of the second. Jonathan Aspirot lobbed a pass out of the Bruins’ zone, and Arvidsson, fresh out of the box after serving an extra penalty for Nikita Zadorov, beat Buffalo defenseman Mattias Samuelsson to the puck and slid a backhand five-hole on Luukkonen.
Morgan Geekie made it 2-0 at 16:29 when he flipped the puck on his backhand from center ice and had it bounce over Luukkonen’s glove and into the net.
“I honestly just tried to dump it in and got a lucky bounce, and it’s nice to see it go in,” Geekie said.
Zacha pushed the lead to 3-0 while on a power play at 18:10, redirecting a feed from Pastrnak past Luukkonen’s blocker in the slot.
“We know their game, and we’ve got to start off better, and we know that,” Sabres forward Zach Benson said. “But there’s positives. We’re playing good in the third, we’re making pushes, but we’ve got to be better. We know that.”