Just the facts<\/p>\n
Where: KeyBank Center \u2013 Buffalo, NY<\/p>\n
How to follow: NESN, ESPN, 98.5 The Sports Hub<\/p>\n
Know your enemy<\/p>\n
*Stats listed above are from the regular season<\/p>\n
Game notes<\/p>\n
After what feels like a few weeks of waiting, the Bruins and Sabres will begin their first round series tonight in Buffalo. Compared to how long Sabres fans have been waiting for this day, however, three or four days will seem like the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n
This will be the first playoff game in Buffalo since April 24, 2011, a 5-4 OT loss to the Flyers in Game 6 of their first round series.<\/p>\n
With Alex Lyon<\/a> still recovering from a late-season injury, the Bruins will see Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen in net for Buffalo tonight and likely for the majority of the series, unless he struggles. Lyon has returned to practice, so he could be a late-series option for Buffalo, if needed.<\/p>\n The Bruins don\u2019t appear to have any fresh injury concerns ahead of Game 1. Pavel Zacha<\/a> and Casey Mittelstadt<\/a> will be available after each of their partners had babies earlier this week.<\/p>\n All signs point to James Hagens being in the lineup for Game 1, as others competing for his spot made up the fifth line at practice<\/a> earlier this week. He looked fine in his NHL tune-up, but it\u2019ll be interesting to see how he fares in playoff hockey (though you could say something similar about several of the Bruins young players).<\/p>\n Jeremy Swayman<\/a> will be the Bruins starter in net. While the playoffs are a different animal, Swayman is 8-1-1 in ten career games against Buffalo.<\/p>\n Aside from Hagens\u2019s status, which seems relatively set, one place where Marco Sturm will have decisions to make is on the blue line. Mason Lohrei<\/a> has been up and down all season, while Jordan Harris<\/a> and Henri Jokiharju<\/a> had some good minutes in the last few games of the regular season.<\/p>\n As this is an ESPN game and there might be some pomp and circumstance (understandably) from the home team, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if this game starts a bit after 7:30, so\u2026plan accordingly.<\/p>\n See ya tonight!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just the facts Where: KeyBank Center \u2013 Buffalo, NY How to follow: NESN, ESPN, 98.5 The Sports Hub…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[4114,6452,154,95,5132,530,1107,229,5379,4112,1754,5,156,19428,8024,1714,3328,4,7610,4011,1712,7800],"class_list":{"0":"post-555960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-alex-lyon","9":"tag-alex-tuch","10":"tag-boston","11":"tag-boston-bruins","12":"tag-bostonbruins","13":"tag-bruins","14":"tag-buffalo","15":"tag-buffalo-sabres","16":"tag-casey-mittelstadt","17":"tag-fraser-minten","18":"tag-henri-jokiharju","19":"tag-hockey","20":"tag-jeremy-swayman","21":"tag-jordan-harris","22":"tag-keybank-center","23":"tag-mason-lohrei","24":"tag-new-york","25":"tag-nhl","26":"tag-pavel-zacha","27":"tag-rasmus-dahlin","28":"tag-tage-thompson","29":"tag-ukko-pekka-luukkonen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116431160640922157","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555960","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=555960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}