BOSTON — The Boston Bruins and Buffalo Sabres have played six periods of hockey in their Eastern Conference First Round series. The Bruins, who were the road team, were happy with five of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll take it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Having left Buffalo with a 4-2 victory in Game 2 on Tuesday to split the first two games of the best-of-7 series, Boston headed back to TD Garden satisfied with how it responded, how it stole the momentum the Sabres had earned with their come-from-behind epic 4-3 win in Game 1. The Bruins liked the way they returned to their game, including an uptick in play from their second line, and the continued excellence from goalie Jeremy Swayman<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been forechecking much better,” forward David Pastrnak<\/a>\u00a0said. “We\u2019ve been playing simple and focused on the details, so we just have to focus on us and know what gives us success. Play best to our abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n But the Sabres have belief too: Game 2 marked the second straight game in which they have been able to make hay in the third period, taking the win in Game 1 and making it closer than anticipated in Game 2.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFor us, going on the road, we don\u2019t have to make too much of it,\u201d goalie Alex Lyon said Wednesday. \u201cWe\u2019re going there to bring our best for 60 minutes tomorrow night and that\u2019s that. Simple mindset and just do the right things, continue the habits that we\u2019ve been working on and just not overthink it too much.\u201d<\/p>\n The Bruins are being led into Game 3 by their leading scorer from the regular season, Pastrnak, who finished 2025-26 with 100 points (29 goals, 71 assists) in 77 games. He has continued that run through the first two games of the postseason, with five points (one goal, four assists), tied with Minnesota Wild forward Joel Eriksson Ek<\/a> and Dallas Stars forwards Jason Robertson<\/a>, Wyatt Johnston<\/a> and Matt Duchene<\/a>.<\/p>\n If Pastrnak has a third straight multipoint game, he would become the seventh skater in Boston history to start such a postseason run and first since Jean Ratelle<\/a>,\u00a0Bobby\u00a0Schmautz<\/a> and\u00a0Terry\u00a0O\u2019Reilly<\/a> in 1977.\u00a0<\/p>\n But whatever he does individually, the Bruins and Sabres each are turning their efforts simply to come out with a win, to shrug off all that happened in Buffalo and start fresh with a lead in the series.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cToday is a new day, focus on Game 3,\u201d Pastrnak said. \u201cWhatever happened, happened. We\u2019ve been trying to stay in the moment the whole year round, don\u2019t look in the past, whether it\u2019s good or bad. Just refocus for tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON — The Boston Bruins and Buffalo Sabres have played six periods of hockey in their Eastern Conference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-623943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}