Yet, with all that being said, the Sabres began Thursday with an enormous opportunity at their doorstep. The Sabres are only six points back with three games in hand on the Bruins, who currently sit in third place in the Atlantic Division. The game tonight begins a home-and-home set between the two teams, which concludes Saturday in Boston, meaning a sweep for the Sabres can cut that deficit significantly.
"We need to be excited about the opportunity we have," Sabres coach Dan Bylsma said. "For everything that we've gone through [in] 34 games, you're staring at a team that's in the playoffs right now … You talk about big games, we're at game 35 but these two games are as big as they're going to get for us."
Robin Lehner, who will start in net tonight, pointed out that games against teams who are close to Buffalo in the standings have been a regularity as of late. Part of that is due to the parity in the Eastern Conference so far this season; the eight teams currently looking to make up ground in the wild card race are all separated by a mere six points.
Those games have yielded varying results so far. Lehner called Buffalo's back-to-back losses against Carolina and the New York Islanders last week their worst two performances of the season, and both were against teams that the Sabres were in close proximity to in the standings. They came back strong with a 4-3 win over division-rival Detroit on the road on Tuesday.
The difference in those games, Lehner said, might have been Buffalo's ability to worry about playing within its own system rather than worrying about the opponent or the situation at hand.
"I think we've got to try and approach it a little differently," Lehner said. "I think we've just got to worry about ourselves, because the last few other times we've kind of been overthinking it a little bit I think and we've been coming out and having some of our worst games, turning the puck over and maybe grabbing the stick a little too hard. We've got to do it like we did against Detroit. Even when they came back and even in tough situations, I felt like we were a little bit more loose last game. We didn't panic, we didn't tighten up too much."
The other thing the Sabres were able to do in Detroit was score the first goal, a feat they've struggled to achieve on home ice over the past month. The Sabres' record is 9-1-5 when scoring first this season, and getting on the board early will be particularly important against a goalie in Tuukka Rask who's only allowed one goal on 68 shots in the first two matchups between Buffalo and Boston.
"I think just keeping the game simple early on is crucial," defenseman Jake McCabe said. "It kind of gets everyone in the game and it kind of gets us to where we want to play. Just like in Detroit, we need to do that tonight."
While the Sabres have lost both of their first two meetings with the Bruins this season, the losses came in two very different games. The first was a 4-0 affair in Boston on Nov. 7, when the Bruins took over the game with three power-play goals. The rematch in Buffalo on Dec. 3 was much closer, a 2-1 game in which the Sabres actually outshot the Bruins 36-33.
"I thought last game was a good indicator of how we need to play against them," Bylsma said. "You can't deviate from the game, you can't try to look for offense and gain offense against this team. If you do, you're going to pay for it."
With Kulikov out, defenseman Cody Franson will return to the lineup after missing the last three games due to injury. Bylsma said Kulikov remains a possibility to return on Saturday in Boston.
Coverage tonight begins at 6:30 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 7 p.m.
