Sabres unable to sustain early momentum in loss

For the first 20 minutes of their game against the Boston Bruins on Thursday night, it looked like the Buffalo Sabres were ready to rise to the occasion. Dan Bylsma said their home-and-home set with Boston was as important a stretch of games as they'd have this season, and the Sabres came out and began that stretch with arguably one of their best periods of the season.

That first period saw the Sabres get a goal from Marcus Foligno in the first two minutes and another from Kyle Okposo in the last two minutes, allowing them to head to the dressing room for the first intermission with a 2-0 lead. The Sabres delivered 14 hits in the first 20 minutes, setting the tone for what looked like would be an emotional game against their division rival.
"It was most definitely I think our best and most emotional first period of the season," Bylsma said. "It was just how we wanted to come out, just how we wanted to play and there was some energy in that period, there was some emotion on both sides of the ledger."

The teams came out for the second period, and it all unraveled. Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci both scored for Boston to tie the game in the second period, and Ryan Spooner scored the go-ahead goal with 3:53 remaining in the lopsided third. Roughly three minutes later, Spooner put the puck in an empty net to seal a 4-2 Boston victory.
With the win, Boston extended its lead over Buffalo in the Atlantic Division to eight points. The two teams meet again in Boston on Saturday afternoon, but the Sabres still couldn't help but feel like they let a major opportunity slip away.

"We were mentally ready for this game," Foligno said. "I mean, everyone was mentally ready. It's frustrating because you have such a good first period and you can't get it going again in the second and the third."

"I feel like we just exhaled," alternate captain Josh Gorges added. "We got a lead, we felt a little comfortable and we stopped doing the little details, the things that were making us successful in the first period and gave them a little bit of life. After that it was going to be a game that was decided on a good play or a broken-down play and that was going to be the difference."
The Bruins outshot the Sabres 27-19 in the second and third periods combined. Bergeron's goal came right off a faceoff on a feed to the front of the net by Brad Marchand, while Krejci scored the game-tying goal on the power play with 3:47 remaining in the second period. Special teams had a heavy influence on the game, with the Sabres going 1-for-6 on the power play and the Bruins going 1-for-5.
The Sabres generated their own chances in the second period, and even could have had more than two in the first if not for another memorable performance by Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask. Rask made 31 saves on 33 shots and has allowed just three goals on 111 shots in three games against Buffalo this season, all Boston wins.
The Buffalo players, however, weren't willing to concede the game to a strong performance by Rask. Okposo said his team needed to do a better job handling momentum and that they should've expected the push from Boston in the second, but added that he thought the loss could be chalked up to minor errors in execution.
"We played well enough to win that game tonight," Okposo said. "I mean, we did a lot of good things. We just needed to do a little bit more but that's the learning curve that we're going through right now. But we've got to try and make sure that we get out of that quickly and make sure that we're winning games."
When the Sabres ventured into this home-and-home series with Boston, they saw it as an opportunity to sweep two games and pull within two points with three games in hand on the team currently sitting in third place in the Atlantic Division. They still do have those games in hand, and now their focus shifts to cancelling this loss with a win in Boston on New Year's Eve.

"You think about it tonight. You learn from your mistakes. Each guy in this room has to, you know, do the old look in the mirror, see what they did, see what they need to do better," Gorges said. "When things like this and games like this happen like tonight, it's frustrating.
"The great thing about this game, we get a chance to come back in their building and play the same team again. We've got to have a lot more of a push, a lot more of an effort, and we should be excited about the challenge."

Okposo gets on the board

You could see the frustration in Okposo's body language when he missed on a scoring chance with the Sabres on the power play in the first period. Okposo entered the night having gone seven games without a goal, his last one having come against Washington on Dec. 9.
Okposo got a second chance on the Sabres' next power play, and he took his time before firing a shot past Rask from the lower edge of the right faceoff circle. The goal was Okposo's team-leading 10th of the season and gave the Sabres a 2-0 lead with 1:50 remaining in the first period.

"I wasn't playing well," Okposo said. "I just caught a little bug and couldn't really shake it but, you know, I'm feeling good now and the last couple games I feel like I've played a lot better. I just want to keep that momentum going."

Carrier leaves early

William Carrier left the game with a hand injury late in the first period and did not return. His exit came following a fight with Bruins defenseman Adam McQuaid. Carrier had been serving a minor penalty for an illegal hit to the head against David Backes, who also left and did not return.
McQuaid came after Carrier immediately after he left the box and was assessed a 10-minute major and an instigating minor in addition to five minutes for fighting, giving the Sabres the power play they'd use to take their 2-0 lead.
A gash could be seen on Carrier's hand after the fight, but Bylsma said the reason he didn't return might have actually been due to a lingering hand injury that had already been bothering him prior to the game.

Up next

The Sabres will close out 2016 when they meet the Bruins again in Boston on Saturday afternoon. Coverage begins at 12:30 p.m. with the TOPS Pregame Show on MSG-B, or you can listen live on WGR 550. The puck drops between the Sabres and Bruins at 1 p.m.