The Boston Bruins have won 11 Stanley Cup playoff rounds since the last time the Buffalo Sabres made the postseason.
That experience seems to have Boston coach Marco Sturm oozing with confidence heading into Game 1 of the best-of-seven Eastern Conference first-round series on Sunday night in Buffalo.
“We know how we have to play, we’re going to be ready to go,” Sturm said Friday. “We’re excited. We are bigger, stronger, we are more physical. We just have to be smart, but we’re going to go after them.”
Buffalo forward Josh Doan said on Saturday that those comments have been seen and heard by the Sabres, who will play their first postseason game since April 26, 2011.
“At the end of the day, I think our group trusts what we’re doing here and we’ll just let that play out throughout the series,” he said. “We’re going to stick to our game plan. So, it’s one of those things that you see, but at the end of the day there’s no real response from us in this room.”
Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff didn’t fire back either when asked about Sturm’s comments.
“That’s his take on his team,” Ruff said. “I have a lot of respect for what our team has done and how we play and the speed we play the game. They’ve got a good team. I mean, they know who they are and we know who we are.”
Boston won three out of four meetings with Buffalo this season, most recently a 4-3 overtime win on March 25 that moved the Bruins into a tie for third in the Atlantic Division at the time.
Boston ultimately finished fourth in the Atlantic, six points behind the third-place Montreal Canadiens. That dropped the Bruins into the Eastern Conference’s first wild-card spot.
The Bruins are just happy to get back into the postseason after missing out last season for the first time in nine years.
“I think if you don’t enjoy (the Stanley Cup playoffs), you’re in the wrong sport or wrong place,” Boston defenseman Nikita Zadorov said. “That’s playoff hockey. That’s pressure, that’s atmosphere, intensity, physicality, blood, sweat — you name it.”
Leading the way for the Bruins will be 29-year-old forward David Pastrnak, who finished the regular season with exactly 100 points (29 goals, 71 assists) — the fourth straight year he has hit triple digits.
After Pastrnak, however, the Bruins have a significant drop-off in point totals with Morgan Geekie next at 68 points (39 goals, 29 assists).
Sturm said he doesn’t expect Ruff to try to match up line for line.
“In the past, Lindy wasn’t really a big matchup guy,” Sturm said. “He did his thing, so we’ll see where it goes. Maybe he does it differently in the playoffs, but we don’t really care.”
The Sabres not only ended the NHL’s longest active playoff drought at 14 years, they won the Atlantic Division by three points over the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Buffalo doesn’t have a 100-point scorer, but Tage Thompson remains one of the top centers in the league. He followed up last year’s 44-goal output with 40 goals and 41 assists this year.
The Sabres also boast one of the top offensive defensemen in Rasmus Dahlin, who finished second on the team with 74 points (19 goals, 55 assists). That ranked sixth among all NHL defensemen.
