The Boston Bruins have won 11 Stanley Cup playoff rounds since the last time the Buffalo Sabres made the postseason.<\/p>\n
That experience seems to have Boston coach Marco Sturm oozing with confidence heading into Game 1 of the best-of-seven Eastern Conference first-round series on Sunday night in Buffalo.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know how we have to play, we\u2019re going to be ready to go,\u201d Sturm said Friday. \u201cWe\u2019re excited. We are bigger, stronger, we are more physical. We just have to be smart, but we\u2019re going to go after them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buffalo forward Josh Doan said on Saturday that those comments have been seen and heard by the Sabres, who will play their first postseason game since April 26, 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, I think our group trusts what we\u2019re doing here and we\u2019ll just let that play out throughout the series,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to stick to our game plan. So, it\u2019s one of those things that you see, but at the end of the day there\u2019s no real response from us in this room.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff didn\u2019t fire back either when asked about Sturm\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s his take on his team,\u201d Ruff said. \u201cI have a lot of respect for what our team has done and how we play and the speed we play the game. They\u2019ve got a good team. I mean, they know who they are and we know who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boston won three out of four meetings with Buffalo this season, most recently a 4-3 overtime win on March 25 that moved the Bruins into a tie for third in the Atlantic Division at the time.<\/p>\n
Boston ultimately finished fourth in the Atlantic, six points behind the third-place Montreal Canadiens. That dropped the Bruins into the Eastern Conference\u2019s first wild-card spot.<\/p>\n
The Bruins are just happy to get back into the postseason after missing out last season for the first time in nine years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if you don\u2019t enjoy (the Stanley Cup playoffs), you\u2019re in the wrong sport or wrong place,\u201d Boston defenseman Nikita Zadorov said. \u201cThat\u2019s playoff hockey. That\u2019s pressure, that\u2019s atmosphere, intensity, physicality, blood, sweat \u2014 you name it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leading the way for the Bruins will be 29-year-old forward David Pastrnak, who finished the regular season with exactly 100 points (29 goals, 71 assists) \u2014 the fourth straight year he has hit triple digits.<\/p>\n
After Pastrnak, however, the Bruins have a significant drop-off in point totals with Morgan Geekie next at 68 points (39 goals, 29 assists).<\/p>\n
Sturm said he doesn\u2019t expect Ruff to try to match up line for line.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past, Lindy wasn\u2019t really a big matchup guy,\u201d Sturm said. \u201cHe did his thing, so we\u2019ll see where it goes. Maybe he does it differently in the playoffs, but we don\u2019t really care.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sabres not only ended the NHL\u2019s longest active playoff drought at 14 years, they won the Atlantic Division by three points over the Tampa Bay Lightning.<\/p>\n
Buffalo doesn\u2019t have a 100-point scorer, but Tage Thompson remains one of the top centers in the league. He followed up last year\u2019s 44-goal output with 40 goals and 41 assists this year.<\/p>\n
The Sabres also boast one of the top offensive defensemen in Rasmus Dahlin, who finished second on the team with 74 points (19 goals, 55 assists). That ranked sixth among all NHL defensemen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Boston Bruins have won 11 Stanley Cup playoff rounds since the last time the Buffalo Sabres made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-555826","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\/116430152883618156","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555826","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=555826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}