Marco Sturm has said on more than one occasion this season that it usually doesn’t mean good things for the rest of your forwards if the fourth line was the best-performing line for any particular game.
And that goes doubly so for the Black and Gold in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
That was exactly the case in Thursday night’s Game 3 as the Bruins dropped a 3-1 decision to the Buffalo Sabres at TD Garden that didn’t have any of the fire and brimstone of their Game 2 win in Buffalo and instead featured a lot of B’s forwards that just weren’t good enough in defeat.
It wasn’t the case for the fourth line, however, as Tanner Jeannot scored his first goal of the playoffs and actually handed the Bruins an early lead after a heavy, punishing shift where Jeannot and Mark Kastelic were hammering Sabres D-men into turnovers and fumbled pucks prior to his score.
“First of all, they were just a little better than us, I’ve got to say,” said Sturm. “I thought we were a little tight right from the start. But we were still in the game, and we were fine. It was unfortunate because we were excited to be at home, but we didn’t play the way we did in Game 1 or 2.
“We did a better job in Game 1 and Game 2 of playing behind them, and for some reason, we didn’t do that as much today. We had [the fourth] line going. They did their job today and got rewarded with a big goal, but we just didn’t have enough today. That’s just not going to do it in the playoffs.”
Unfortunately for the Black and Gold, it was a script they couldn’t follow for much of the rest of the evening prior to another strong closing period from the Sabres that ultimately lifted them to victory. Alex Tuch scored the game-winning goal off a sniped top corner shot from the top of the circle after a similarly punishing shift from Buffalo, where Tuch helped sustain possession with a nasty reverse hit on Mason Lohrei in the corner, keeping the puck low in the B’s defensive zone.
It felt pretty clear that Sturm was searching for his answers among his forward group as James Hagens was pulled from the second PP unit in favor of Casey Mittelstadt and was also left on the bench toward the end of the third period as the Bruins were searching for a desperation goal.
Hagens finished with one shot on net in a team-low 9:53 of ice time as Marat Khusnutdinov and Fraser Minten finished without even getting a shot attempt, and the B’s rookie had the unfortunate fate of Buffalo’s game-tying goal deflecting off his stick before it went past Jeremy Swayman.
It feels obvious that it may be time for Lukas Reichel, Mikey Eyssimont, or Alex Steeves to find their way into the lineup for Sunday’s Game 4, but nobody is talking about a major impact move either way.
Instead it really comes down to Boston’s top guys playing like their top guys in the playoffs after David Pastrnak finished with a team-worst minus-3 rating while failing to crack the score sheet, and Pastrnak, Morgan Geekie and Elias Lindholm were victimized for Buffalo’s first goal while not bringing enough to the table offensively during either 5-on-5 play or on the bevy of power plays that the B’s had throughout the game.
“It was a tight-checking game, and we had chances to extend the lead, and then to tie it, and unfortunately, we needed to be better. It’s playoff and every game has been tight-checking, and they came in on top of it. We need to regroup and we need to better and come in prepared for [Game 4],” said Pastrnak. “The way the series has gone it’s been tight around and every game has been the same script. We just need to bear down. We had big opportunities on the power play. We get two power plays in the last six or seven minutes and we need to bury one of those. The goalie played well, but we also need to be harder on him.”
It was Boston’s top line that put the B’s in a position to win Game 1, and it was their much-celebrated second line that carried the day, scoring three of their four goals in the Game 2 road win. But neither of them could muster up enough offense against an energized Alex Lyon in net for the Sabres, a very good move by Lindy Ruff after the Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen meltdown on Tuesday night in Buffalo.
