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To suggest that this road trip has not gone as expected for the Boston Bruins would be putting it mildly.
With their third loss in a row official by the night’s end in Philadelphia on Wednesday, the B’s dropped to 1-2-1 through the first four games of their five-game trip, a stretch that concludes with tonight’s trip to Buffalo, where the Bruins will look to avoid dropping their fourth in a row for the first time March 2012.
At First Niagara Center for the first time this year, the Bruins will square off with the Sabres for just the second time this season, with Buffalo taking the last game behind a huge third period comeback in a 6-3 final at TD Garden, and against a Sabres squad that’s won two in a row despite their last place status.
It’s been borderline impossible to take ‘moral victories’ in Boston’s losses, as the B’s have scored just four goals through their three-game losing streak, and have most recently seen jolt-of-life offensive winger David Pastrnak once again exit the lineup with what the team is calling an upper-body injury. (Pastrnak returned to Boston from the World Juniors with a broken finger, one that the team did not expect to limit him, though it’s still unclear if that’s the upper-body injury that’s bothering him.)
But, if you want to look at the positives for the Bruins, it’s come from their fourth line of Landon Ferraro, Zac Rinaldo, and center Max Talbot, which gave the opposition nightmares for the second game in a row this past Wednesday.
They are absolutely relentless on the forecheck -- Ferraro and Rinaldo in particular -- and their bangaround style has often led to chances between the circles or for a pinching defenseman.
It’s a spark that the Bruins, who have looked absolutely flat as all hell since the Winter Classic, have needed at times, and one that the fourth line hopes can reverberate up through the rest of the lineup.
Still, you need more than energy and forechecking alone, and the Bruins know that.
This is a game where you hope your leaders up front -- Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, and even Loui Eriksson (though I’d argue you rarely have to worry about him) -- need to come up with big goals in key moments. The B’s are not playing with a full deck, and these guys are just a few that need to be better.
A win tonight and the Bruins return to the Hub with five of a possible ten points. It’s not ideal, far from it actually, but it still looks a whole lot better than three or four of a possible 10.
In net, the Bruins will go to the man that started this road trip a week ago, Jonas Gustavsson.
Gustavsson stopped 19-of-20 in that start against the New Jersey Devils last Friday, and comes into action with seven wins and a .909 save percentage in 12 games this season. The 31-year-old allowed four goals on 27 shots in his prior head-to-head with the Sabres this year, and comes into action with just two wins (including one shutout) and a .913 save percentage in eight starts against Buffalo.
And in what will be his first NHL game since Oct. 8, the Sabres counter with Robin Lehner. Out with a high ankle sprain, Lehner makes his return to the NHL after a three-game conditioning stint -- he had one win and an .888 save percentage with the Rochester Americans -- and looks to build off what was an OK start to his Buffalo career (Lehner stopped all but one of 12 shots against in his debut). The 24-year-old has three wins and a .925 save percentage in 11 career games against the Bruins.
Defenseman Joe Morrow and forward Tyler Randell are the expected healthy scratches for the Bruins. If Pastrnak remains out of action for tonight’s tilt, too, Frank Vatrano will likely remain in. If Pastrnak returns, then all bets are off, as coach Claude Julien’s wheel of forward scratches knows no bounds.
David Krejci and Adam McQuaid both remain out of action with upper-body injuries.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.