{"id":643353,"date":"2026-05-02T16:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T16:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/643353\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T16:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T16:30:08","slug":"bruins-lose-east-1st-round-to-sabres-home-woes-among-factors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/643353\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruins lose East 1st Round to Sabres, home woes among factors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here are five reasons why the Bruins were eliminated:<\/p>\n

1. Not much help for Swayman<\/p>\n

The Bruins being ousted had nothing to do with goaltending. Jeremy Swayman<\/a>\u00a0did his part throughout the series (2.91 goals-against average, .906 save percentage), despite being pulled in the third period of a 6-1 loss in Game 4. Swayman displayed his frustration toward his teammates as he left the ice.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least one guy (was motivated), right?\u201d Sturm said.<\/p>\n

The Bruins responded to Swayman\u2019s message with a 2-1 overtime win in Game 5 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo. Swayman made 22 saves in Game 6 on Friday, but his teammates in front of him were held to one goal for the third time in the series.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Swayman has been named a finalist for the Vezina Trophy, awarded to the NHL\u2019s top goalie, after he went 31-18-4 with a 2.71 GAA and .908 save percentage in 54 games during the regular season.<\/p>\n

2. Home woes<\/p>\n

After tying the Carolina Hurricanes in the regular season for the most home wins in the League (29), the Bruins lost each of their three playoff games at TD Garden. Boston defenseman Charlie McAvoy<\/a>, an alternate captain, described his team\u2019s play at home against the Sabres as \u201cnot acceptable.\u201d Sturm said he thought maybe his players felt too much pressure on home ice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know exactly what it is,\u201d McAvoy said. \u201cWe can talk a big game in here about how excited we are, and for whatever reason we were awesome at home this year. (But) we didn\u2019t do it when it mattered the most. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a maturity thing, it it\u2019s we just weren\u2019t ready to go, details, I\u2019m not exactly sure. They got the jump on us all three times.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here are five reasons why the Bruins were eliminated: 1. Not much help for Swayman The Bruins being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-643353","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\/643353","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=643353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}