Bruins-Sabres Preview: Boston Not Taking Struggling Buffalo For Granted

BOSTON — The Bruins have returned home for a St. Patrick’s Day game against the Buffalo Sabres. Even though the Sabres own the NHL’s worst record, they work extremely hard and have many young players motivated to prove they deserve a long-term role the club.

Those are among the reasons Boston has needed overtime to beat Buffalo in the two previous meetings between these teams this season.

“They got a lot of young guys with a lot of energy and they’re playing well, so we need to be ready to compete,” Bruins center Chris Kelly said.

“If you take this team for granted, you’re going to be in big trouble. Every game they play, they’re in the game and it’s a bounce here or a bounce there. They’ve been on the wrong side, but they’re playing well and competing, and doing the things that teams need to do to have success.”

One area of emphasis for the Bruins on Tuesday night is playing a better first period. The B’s were out-shot 10-1 at one point in the opening period during Sunday night’s 2-0 loss to the Washington Capitals.

“I thought that was a glaring thing in the last game,” Kelly said. “(The Capitals) came out ready to play and it took us a while to get our feet under us. We want to be ready to play right from the start and continue that throughout the course of the game.”

Here’s a preview of Bruins-Sabres:

TV, Radio Information: NBC Sports Network and 98.5 The Sports Hub

Season Series: Boston 3-0

Record: Boston (36-23-10, fourth in Atlantic), Buffalo (19-43-7, eighth in Atlantic)

Bruins Player To Watch: Reilly Smith is struggling to produce offensively and has scored just three goals in his last 32 games. That includes a 10-game goalless drought during which he’s tallied three shots or more in just two contests.

“He’s shooting more,” Bruins head coach Claude Julien said. “He’s had a couple of good shots there and this morning again I saw him shooting some pucks. He’s got a good shot, he’s just got to probably use it a little bit more. I think a lot of times he’s trying to feed his linemates where the choice would probably be shoot first.

“A little bit of a shoot-first mentality is going to help him out a little bit and certainly give him some confidence. If you got confidence the rest of your game kind of follows up. You got more energy, you got the confidence to make more plays and so on so forth. Right now, he’s just not able to convert a lot of his chances, so right now he feels like he’s not bringing a lot.”

Sabres Player To Watch: Tyler Ennis leads Buffalo in scoring with 38 points (18 goals, 20 assists) in 67 games. He’s tallied five points (three goals, two assists) in the last five games, including a goal in the Sabres’ shootout loss to the Washington Capitals on Monday night. Ennis has posted three points (one goal, two assists) in three games against the Bruins this season.

Key Stat For Bruins: The Bruins are 8-2-1 in their last 10 games, all of which top-six center David Krejci has missed with a knee injury. How are the Bruins winning games without one of their best players? Well, one of the main reasons is they rank third in the league with a .945 save percentage. Backup goaltender Niklas Svedberg is expected to start versus Buffalo.

Key Stat For Sabres: Buffalo has the worst special teams in the league. The Sabres rank 30th with a 11.2 power-play percentage and 30th with a 74 percent success rate on the penalty kill.

Thumbnail photo via Michael Dwyer/Associated Press