The Buffalo Sabres historic season continues to roll on as they defeated the Boston Bruins 4-3 in Game 1 of the NHL playoffs on Sunday night.
It was Buffalo's first playoff game since the 2011 season.
Boston opened the scoring on a Morgan Geekie open shot in front of the net. Despite trailing, Buffalo outshot the Bruins throughout the game. In the first two minutes of the third period, Elias Lindholm put Boston up 2-0.
As the Sabres crowd rallied on, so did the team. Tage Thompson scored back-to-back goals for Buffalo with under 7 minutes to go in regulation.
Mattias Samuelsson scored the go-ahead goal shortly after, Alex Tuch followed up with an empty-netter, giving Buffalo a 4-2 lead. Boston scored with just a couple of seconds left, but it was too little, too late as the Sabres hung on to claim the victory.
Thompson said after the game that it was nice to get the win for the fan base.
"It was unbelievable. Didn't really know what to expect," said Thompson. "To be honest with you, I have kind of been thinking about it all day, the last few days, actually. In the last half of the season, the fans have been unbelievable, and it's been so much fun to play in front of them, you know, win games for them, and find ourselves in the playoffs. And we didn't know what the next level, I guess, for the fan base could get to. And I was pretty excited to see coming out for warm-ups, it was already almost full, just a ton of energy. And tonight's game was just full of emotion, I think, for everyone. So I was happy that we could come out on the right side of it," said Thompson.
Tage credited his linemates for the two goals that put the team back in the game.
"I don't think by any means it was an individual effort. I think if you look at both those plays, it's from both my linemates' forecheck and disrupting, causing a turnover,"
Despite the slow offensive start and emotional rollercoaster of Sunday's win, Samuelsson believes it serves as a learning experience for the Sabres.
"I think we learned a lot just about the highs and lows in games and series. I think that was a good learning lesson for us tonight." Mattias added, "You know, the belief in the group never wavers."
After the victory, Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff said he was privately asked from his staff if he had ever been part of a game like this in the playoffs.
“After a couple of thousand games, I don’t know, you could feel the building shaking again, even upstairs, they said that the atmosphere was unbelievable," said Ruff.
For many players on the Buffalo roster, this was a first-time playoff experience,
"I told them right after the game, you want experience. You got it now. I mean, what an experience. If you're going to say this was my first playoff game, you've got a great story to tell," said Ruff.
Game 2 is in Buffalo on Tuesday at 7:30 PM.
