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Sabres' Lindback slams door on frustrated Bruins

March 17, 2015, 11:46 PM ET [47 Comments]
Ty Anderson
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In their season series finale, Buffalo Sabres netminder Anders Lindback looked every inch of his towering 6-foot-6 frame and then some on Tuesday night. In a stellar 44-save performance (and stops on all three Boston shooters in the shootout), Lindback simply mystified a frustrated B’s bunch and led the charge towards an improbable, 2-1 win for the Sabres at TD Garden.

“I think we as a team deserve it,” Lindback said of the win. “We have been working so hard and where we are it’s a tough situation to be in for everyone that is here. I got to say that I have been impressed with everybody to just keep battling and keep buying in on a day like this, so it feels good.

“You have to be able to give your team a chance to win every night to be a starting goalie in this league and it’s not an easy thing. It’s been what I have been working towards trying to get there.”

And this was a win that the Black and Gold forced Lindback to straight-up earn.

The Bruins scored the game’s first goal by way of Loui Eriksson’s ability to beat Buffalo’s Anders Lindback up high for his 18th goal of the season. The goal, Eriksson’s 18th of the year and his fourth in the last eight games, came with helpers from Adam McQuaid (his fourth of the season) and Carl Soderberg (his 26th), and served as the lone goal of the opening frame.

It was a period that was all Bruins, too, with the Bruins holding a huge 14-to-3 shot advantage through 20 minutes, with the Soderberg line carrying the pace of play with a combined six of the B’s 14 shots.

That tune continued on throughout the second period, as Boston outshot the Sabres 12-to-7, but it was a late period penalty from Soderberg that carried over into the third and put the Sabres on the board.

With a swarm in front of Niklas Svedberg’s crease, Buffalo defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen teed up a shot, and found a fortunate bounce off B’s defender Matt Bartkowski’s skate and into the back of the net. The goal, scored at the 1:23 mark of the third, was Ristolainen’s fifth of the year, and just the Sabres’ 10th road power-play goal of the entire season.

Deadlocked at 1-1, that score held for the next 18:37 in spite of a Boston’s extremely active defensive corp, and with the Soderberg line controlling the puck with ease on every offensive zone shift.

The score was even saved by a tremendous net-front save by Svedberg, who stopped 23-of-24 shots against, on Brian Gionta on Buffalo’s second power play of the night.

And the dueling ones held once more after a five-minute overtime that included seven shots from Boston sticks compared to three from Buffalo, and forced Lindback’s Sabres to a third straight shootout.

In the shootout, Buffalo top-liner Tyler Ennis beat Svedberg with a top-shelf look in the bottom of the first, while Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, and Torey Krug all failed to find the back of Lindback’s net en route to the Bruins’ second loss in three days.

“Every point is important right now, and of course, it’s a tough one to lose, especially when Ottawa won today and the teams behind us are chasing us,” said Eriksson. “Every point is huge.

“We need to find ways to score those goals and we’re maybe too slow to put it in and giving too much time for the goalie to come back and make the save. I thought we did a pretty good job to get shots on net today. We just need to find more ways to score more goals.”

That, as simple as it sounds, is what it comes back to for the Bruins. If you include their Sunday night showing in D.C., Eriksson’s goal is the only goal the B’s have on their last 77 shots for. And it’s put the B’s in another situation where they’ll have to be on their absolute best game when they take to the ice for a Thursday night showdown with the Ottawa Senators, who now trail the Bruins by just four points (and with a game in hand). They’ve made a habit of living 2014-15 life on the edge, and they know it.

“We know what’s at stake,” Boston coach Claude Julien said of Thursday’s matchup with the Sens. “So it’s up to us to bounce back here and that win next game’s going to be as important as it’s ever been so far this year. And we know that, so we’ve got to pick up our socks here and not feel sorry for ourselves because we feel we got short changed here tonight and understand what’s at stake.”

Random thoughts and notes

- Well, what can you really say?

Anders Lindback stood on his freakin’ head for 65 minutes, and the Bruins left the ice with just one point opposed to two. It’s the most frustrating end result imaginable given the way that the Bruins dominated the game -- in chances and possession alone -- and one that the Bruins have been on the wrong end of oh so many times this season. Again, it’s frustrating, but on nights like this, there’s only so much ranting and raving you can really do, and it really fails to mask the real reason behind a loss like this. And that, of course, is a goaltender that shines above the team in front of him.

“It was almost like the “Thrilla in Manila;” we just rope-a-doped them,” Buffalo coach Ted Nolan said of the Sabres’ ability to simply hang out against the Bruins. “I think they got tired going in our offensive zone for the whole period, but they almost seemed like they were in there for 19 minutes, and [Anders] Lindback played great. I thought we were in pretty good position defensively for a vast majority of the game. We have to be, and to luck it out at the end was good for this group.”

At the same time, however, a mid-March home game against the worst team in your conference (and maybe the league) when you’re in the middle of a hunt to solidify your playoff spot? Basically a no-can-do no matter how you spin it. And deep down, the B’s know this, too.

“It’s a disappointing result for sure. Right now we’re about getting results and getting the two points,” B’s alternate captain Patrice Bergeron said after the loss. “You know what’s going on in the standings. It’s a game tonight that we knew we needed to get and we didn’t so it is frustrating.”

- Touching on that last point, when you talk about the Bruins controlling possession to a tee, you’ll talk about this game. My goodness, did they put on an absolute clinic in the Buffalo end. Boston finished the night with a whopping 95 attempted shots. 45 went on net, 28 were blocked, and 22 were missed. They were swarming the Sabres from the moment the puck dropped on this one. And everybody chimed in. I know I should preface literally every single one of these sentences with a ‘I know it’s the Sabres, but’, but nobody on the Bruins finished with a negative Corsi. Torey Krug was a plus-37. Soderberg was a plus-24. The worst CF%’s on the team tonight? Gregory Campbell and Max Talbot, each at 55%.

On the ice, the Bruins’ line of Eriksson, Soderberg, and Chris Kelly finished with a combined 23 shot attempts. The Krug and Adam McQuaid pairing had a combined 19 attempts.

This was a total clinic by the Bruins in every which way besides goals scored.

That’ll eat at ‘ya.

(Alternate version: The Bruins need to shoot anywhere besides Lindback's chest/into his glove.)

- Why did the Bruins go with Torey Krug, a defenseman, over the likes of a David Pastrnak, Ryan Spooner, and Reilly Smith in a must-score top of the third in the shootout? Well, if you ask me, it’s a situation where Claude Julien was rewarding No. 47 for a downright hungry game. If there was a loose puck to be had, the 5-foot-9 Krug was in on it. Chance to join the rush? Krug was there. He went with a hunch, and it didn’t pay off this time. But keep in mind, Krug has been a go-to option for Julien before tonight, too. Then again, I suppose that’s not saying much given how awful this team is in shootouts.

- Here’s something I wouldn’t read too much into: Goaltender Jeremy Smith was recalled from Providence on an emergency basis and suited up as the team’s backup tonight as Tuukka Rask sat out tonight’s game with what the Bruins called ‘general soreness’. This is something that would happen in the older EA Sports NHL games when you’d start a goalie a ridiculous amount of games in a row. (Oh my God, that might be the most absurd/dumbest thing I’ve ever written in an actual blog for human eyes.) How I read Rask’s absence, though? This was Julien’s way of making sure that Rask would not see a minute of ice-time if Svedberg struggled and had to get the early hook.

- Some meaningless notes here: With the win, the Sabres avoid the regular season series sweep at the hands of the Bruins. Neither team has been able to accomplish this in 44 years of head-to-head action. That’s pretty nuts. And this is the Bruins’ first home loss on St. Patrick’s Day since 1994, when Pittsburgh’s Jaromir Jagr scored the game-winning goal on B’s netminder Jon Casey in a 4-2 victory at the Boston Garden. And like that night, Irish eyes, though probably a bit blurred from a heavy intake at the Garden concession stands, were not smiling on their way out of the building tonight.

Up next

It’s off to Ottawa for the Bruins for a Thursday night showdown with the Senators. The Sens, who just will not go away, won once again on Tuesday night, and will enter this play within four points of the Black and Gold (with a game in hand, too). The Bruins are 2-0-2 against the Sens this year, and this will be the fifth and final head-to-head between the two Atlantic Division foes in 2014-15.

Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com
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