BOSTON – Before Thursday’s 3-1 win over the Bruins, coach Lindy Ruff said officials warned the Buffalo Sabres they “weren’t gonna put up with the after-the-whistle stuff.”
“They’re gonna take one guy,” he said of the what the teams were told. “And the first guy that puts the fist in the other guy’s face is gonna get called.”
As the longtime rivals split the first two games of the opening-round playoff series, scrums and melees constantly materialized.
It certainly felt like things might get out of hand in Game 3. Instead, everything remained pretty calm.
When Sabres winger Peyton Krebs got his hands up on an opponent 13:57 into the contest, he earned a roughing penalty that likely wouldn’t have been called in another game.
Ruff said the Sabres “failed that test” following the warning.
“Totally expected that to be called,” he said Friday in the Four Seasons One Dalton.
The Sabres killed that penalty and four total in Game 3, including two in the waning minutes as they held a 2-1 lead.
While their power-play woes have received loads of attention – they’re zero of the last 36, including 15 attempts in the postseason – the Sabres’ other special-teams unit, the penalty killing, helped them win Thursday’s contest.
Captain Rasmus Dahlin went off for interference 11:27 into the third period before center Tage Thompson was whistled for tripping at 14:13.
“The energy on the bench with the Dahlin penalty, everybody was saying, ‘We’ve got to kill this for our captain,’ which is the right approach,” Ruff said. “Whether we liked the penalty or not at that time of the game, this falls in the ‘grab a guy’ category and help him out.”
Ruff said Thompson said, “I hope they were saying the same thing about me.”
“We needed another kill,” Ruff said. “And I thought our last two kills were our best kills. Our early kills, we got running a little bit, we got exposed, we got a couple big saves by our goaltender. Those last two kills were pretty solid, where we limited the type of opportunities that they were getting to a minimum.”
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In Tuesday’s 4-2 loss, the Sabres won just two of their 20 faceoffs in the first period, a sign, Ruff said, they did not play well enough.
“We didn’t compete hard enough,” he said. “There’s no way you walk out of a period and you’re 2-and-18 in faceoffs. We talked about that as a level of compete. That compete wasn’t good enough.”
Overall that night, they won just 45 percent of their draws (30 of 66).
They rebounded on Thursday, winning 51 percent of their faceoffs (26 of 51).
It might not sound like much of an improvement, but every percentage point leads to more time with the puck.
Ruff leaned heavily on center Ryan McLeod, his top faceoff man, again on Thursday. In each of the past two contests, he won 55 percent of his faceoffs (12 of 22 both games).
“Clouder, he’s at the forefront when it comes to a guy who we need to win faceoffs, because we usually use him with no right-handed draw,” Ruff said. “He’s got to take them on the off-hand, it’s a tougher draw, so we need to dig in harder. And I thought we dug in last night.”
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The Sabres had Friday off and will practice this afternoon at TD Garden. Game 4 is Sunday afternoon.
“Just rest today,” Ruff said. “I mean, really, we just played three games in five nights, highly emotional games, mentally draining. Just take it easy today. … Just get yourself ready for a light skate tomorrow, and know that we’re in for facing one hell of a game on Sunday.”
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Ruff said center Josh Norris, who missed Thursday’s game with an undisclosed injury, feels “a little bit better” and could practice today
“There’s a possibility, for sure,” he said. “He’s in that day-to-day category, so I wouldn’t rule him out yet.”