{"id":555427,"date":"2026-04-18T18:06:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T18:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/555427\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T18:06:54","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T18:06:54","slug":"practice-report-lineup-notes-and-player-comments-on-the-eve-of-game-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/555427\/","title":{"rendered":"Practice Report | Lineup notes and player comments on the eve of Game 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lindy Ruff pulled aside Josh Doan, Jack Quinn and Zach Benson and delivered some playoff wisdom following practice at KeyBank Center on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[Lindy told us] it takes one shift to get playoff experience, and once you get that one shift underway, then you should be ready to go,\u201d Doan said.<\/p>\n<p>A host of Sabres players \u2013 Doan, Quinn and Benson included \u2013 will get their first taste of the playoffs on Sunday, when they host Game 1 of their first-round series against the Boston Bruins. The anticipation only ratcheted up Saturday, with white rally towels adorning the 19,070 seats surrounding the Sabres as they held their final pre-playoff practice.<\/p>\n<p>Buffalo does have its share of playoff tested veterans, including a Stanley Cup winner in Bowen Byram and a pair of finalists in Alex Tuch and Ryan McLeod. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/sabres\/news\/buffalo-sabres-playoffs-experience-bowen-byram-river-hockey\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">We explored the topic of playoff experience, and how the Sabres\u2019 style might translate, here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m just really excited,\u201d Tuch said. \u201cI was thinking about it a little bit last night and it was a little harder to fall asleep. It\u2019s been an unbelievable season so far.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel like the players, I\u2019ve said before, are really proud of what we\u2019ve accomplished, but the work\u2019s not done, and in our eyes it\u2019s just beginning. We\u2019re ready to come out and play a really good Boston Bruins team, and we\u2019re going to come out swinging in Game 1.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s more from Saturday\u2019s practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lindy Ruff pulled aside Josh Doan, Jack Quinn and Zach Benson and delivered some playoff wisdom following practice&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-555427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-boston-bruins","10":"tag-bostonbruins","11":"tag-bruins","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116427043627490029","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}