The Boston Bruins won game five of their series with the Buffalo Sabres,
thus doing their best to ensure that there will be at least one more LCS
Boston Bruins column for the 1998-1999 season. Despite the predictions
of Boston Globe columnist Bob “Chicken Little” Ryan that the Bruins
would not win another game in the series after their game three loss,
the Bruins stormed back from a fluky 1-0 deficit to drive Dominik Hasek
from the game and beat the Sabres 5-3. Ryan, appearing on various
sports talk shows during the week, felt that the Bruins were toast based
on a performance in game four that everyone associated with the Bruins
felt was uninspired. Some even used harsher words, like “stunk.”
However, by waiting to file this report until after game six, this
reporter foiled the Boston team's plans to wrangle another column out of
their beleaguered correspondent. The Bruins were unable to break the
mini-curse of Marine Midlands, and fell to the Buffalo Sabres in six by
a score of 3-2, in a game that was hardly that close.
The Bruins headed back to Buffalo hoping to sustain their game five
level of effort. They also hoped that the Sabres, who felt their own
game five performance was not up to par, did not come back with an
inspired “can't touch this” game of their own to clinch the series in
front of their home crowd. Neither of the Bruins wishes came true,
because the Sabres turned in another night of outskating, outhitting,
and outscoring their younger and less inspired adversaries.
The series opened as Bruins fans hoped and dreamed, with the Bruins
taking advantage of home ice to down the Sabres, almost making Dominik
Hasek seem like just another goalie to drub.
The Bruins scored four on Hasek, with Dimitri Khristich adding the coup
de grace with an empty-net goal as Boston won the opener 4-2.
Boston had started with a 2-0 lead on goals by Jason Allison in the
first and Khristich, in the second period.
They then traded goals, with Alexei Zhitnik tallying on a power play at
18, and Joe Thornton scoring his second playoff goal at 19:46, tipping
in a Ray Bourque blast. Buffalo's Jason Woolley made it 3-2 when fired
a loose puck from the left point past Dafoe at 9:37 of the third
period. But that was it for the Sabres, and the Bruins were off to a
fine start.
Things started to turn sour in game two, however, when the Sabre’s
forechecking hemmed the Bruins in and resulted in turnovers and bad
plays in the Bruins end.
The Sabres beat the Bruins 3-1 Sunday to gain a split and take away home
ice advantage from Boston. Michael Peca, Curtis Brown and Dixon Ward
scored for Buffalo. Hasek would have rung up a shutout if it had not
been for Don Sweeney's goal late in the third. The Bruins were so busy
griping about an Alexei Zhitnik hit on Ray Bourque in the second period
that they didn't bother to score the goals they needed to win. Zhitnik
clearly drilled Bourque from behind, right in the numbers, but only got
a two-minute sit-down, much to the chagrin of the Bruins bench. Zhitnik
was philosophical about the hit. "If I wanted to injure him," Zhitnik
said, "he wouldn't be playing anymore." It is nice to see a hockey
player who is so civilized and in control. Alexei should consider
auditioning for one of those Charles Barkley and Bret Favre deodorant
commercials, perhaps depicting a penalty-box wine tasting.
"If they take a run at our best player, they should expect the same
thing back," Boston's Rob DiMaio said. Unfortunately, it was mostly
bluster, as nobody from Buffalo took a major lick and lost any game time
for the rest of the series. Part of this had to do with the fact that
every time Ken Belanger stepped on the ice, he might as well have just
skated to the sin bin -- he was called for some of the most trivial
penalties ever. A swinging follow-through that never touched a Sabre
became a high stick minor, while there was no penalty called when
Dominik Hasek took a large divot out of Jason Allison's cheek with his
goalie club. You've got to wonder what they were watching.
But this wasn't the difference. The difference was the skating of the
Buffalo forwards all series. The Sabres were aggressive in this game and
most of the others, with Michael Peca, the obvious series MVP no matter
what anyone else says, scoring 1:51 into the game as Buffalo outshot
Boston 17-5 in the first period. This was all too common during the
series. Even playing without their leading scorer, Miroslav Satan, who
led them with 40 regular-season goals, the Sabres cranked the Bruins all
series.
As a measure of the Bruins frustration, they had a two-man advantage for
1:42, but they managed just three shots. Time and time again throughout
the series, the forechecking pressure of the Sabres disrupted the Boston
breakout, power play, and penalty kill. The Bruins had no counter.
The Sabres beat the Bruins 3-1 Sunday to gain a split and take away home
ice advantage from Boston. Michael Peca, Curtis Brown and Dixon Ward
scored for Buffalo. Hasek would have rung up a shutout if it had not
been for Don Sweeney's goal late in the third. The Bruins were so busy
griping about an Alexei Zhitnik hit on Ray Bourque in the second period
that they didn't bother to score the goals they needed to win. Zhitnik
clearly drilled Bourque from behind, right in the numbers, but only got
a two-minute sit-down, much to the chagrin of the Bruins bench. Zhitnik
was philosophical about the hit. "If I wanted to injure him," Zhitnik
said, "he wouldn't be playing anymore." It is nice to see a hockey
player who is so civilized and in control. Alexei should consider
auditioning for one of those Charles Barkley and Bret Favre deodorant
commercials, perhaps depicting a penalty-box wine tasting.
"If they take a run at our best player, they should expect the same
thing back," Boston's Rob DiMaio said. Unfortunately, it was mostly
bluster, as nobody from Buffalo took a major lick and lost any game time
for the rest of the series. Part of this had to do with the fact that
every time Ken Belanger stepped on the ice, he might as well have just
skated to the sin bin -- he was called for some of the most trivial
penalties ever. A swinging follow-through that never touched a Sabre
became a high stick minor, while there was no penalty called when
Dominik Hasek took a large divot out of Jason Allison's cheek with his
goalie club. You've got to wonder what they were watching.
But this wasn't the difference. The difference was the skating of the
Buffalo forwards all series. The Sabres were aggressive in this game and
most of the others, with Michael Peca, the obvious series MVP no matter
what anyone else says, scoring 1:51 into the game as Buffalo outshot
Boston 17-5 in the first period. This was all too common during the
series. Even playing with their leading scorer, Miroslav Satan, who led
them with 40 regular-season goals, the Sabres cranked the Bruins all
series.
As a measure of the Bruins frustration, they had a two-man advantage for
1:42, but they managed just three shots. Time and time again throughout
the series, the forechecking pressure of the Sabres disrupted the Boston
breakout, power play, and penalty kill. The Bruins had no counter.
In their first home game of the series, the Sabres treated their fans to
a 3-2 win on Wednesday night, with Dixon Ward scoring the winner halfway
through the third period and Hasek frustrating Boston for the final 51
minutes of the game.
Buffalo slacked in the first two periods, but came out in the third
period and stunned the Bruins, who at first seemed like they wanted to
sit on a two-goal cushion. Soon they were fighting for their playoff
lives, and frankly, it is here that the series was lost. After holding
Buffalo to just seven shots over 40 minutes, the Bruins let the Sabres
run wild and take 17 shots at Byron Dafoe, and two of them found a way
into the goal. Hold that lead and take a 2-1 edge into game 4, or cough
up the lead and game 4 suddenly seems like a bottomless pit.
The Buffalo fans targeted Bourque with banners that read "Stick a fork
in Ray Bork" and ten seconds into the game, it looked like an accurate
prediction. Bourque went off for tripping Dixon Ward, and Jason Woolley
scored his second goal of the playoffs on a backhander with 34 seconds
left on the penalty.
Goals by Steve Heinze and Anson Carter put the Bruins up 2-1, and the
Bruins looked like they were ready for cruise control. But somebody
forgot to tell the Sabres.
On Friday, the Sabres handed the Bruins their most embarrassing loss of
the playoffs, shutting out the B's 3-0. The win gave Buffalo a 3-1 lead
in games and things started to look very dark for Boston.
Now that the series is over, a question remains: why did the Bruins have
so much trouble with Buffalo, even though they finished ahead of them in
the regular season? Buffalo beat the Bruins in four out of five games,
but lost regular season games many times to lesser teams, and had
trouble with the NHL elite.
One of the reasons for this discrepancy is the difference in the Bruins
and Sabres playing style and system.
The Bruins play a tight checking positional game that tries to control
the puck low in the enemy zone, tends to send in a single forechecker,
traps at mid-ice, and tries to prevent high percentage shots in their
own zone. Offensively, it is a defense-lugs-the-puck (Robert Gordon
who?), dump and chase, non-breakout style of play. If the forwards lose
control of the puck, they dig for the puck and try to steal it back. I
common Boston parlance, this is called muckin' in the conners" -- notice
the carefully dropped "R."
Buffalo, on the other hand, employs an offensive style that focuses on
headmanning the puck (an old-time-hockey word that basically means “pass
the puck to the forward closest to the opposition's goal”), defensemen
pinching in to keep the puck in the opposition's zone, and “In Dominik
we trust.” This is a team that does not obsess about odd-man rushes.
Their forwards are very aggressive in forechecking, and skate
extensively in the zone rather than stay at a fixed spot. If they lose
the puck, they pound the opposing player who gets it, rather than dig to
try to get the puck back.
Put the two together, and what do you get? A mismatch of serious
proportions. The Sabres fare worst against teams that have speedy
forwards who tend to look for breakout passes. The Sabres lose games to
the Islanders because of Ziggy Palffy and to the Penguins because of
Jaromir Jagr, both breakaway type guys. Ironically, the Bruins fare
well against Jagr, because they stifle odd man breaks and smother
Jaromir in a Hal Gill straitjacket
But the Sabres do not have to fear that kind of breakout game against
Boston. So their forwards can be even more aggressive, and their
defensemen, rarely needing to look behind to see if a Bruin has snuck
out of the zone, are free to pinch in and keep the puck in the zone.
Heck, against Boston, the defensemen were making drop passes and
rushing the net.
This amount of movement is just the thing to overpower a Pat Burns
positional defense, and time and time again, some dinky pass into an
open area would be picked up by a cycling Sabre and tossed at Dafoe,
every once in a while with disastrous results. Anytime a Boston player,
including Dafoe, so much as fumbled the puck from an instant, a Buffalo
player pounced, and likely as not fired a shot on goal. The Bruins
offense, on the other hand, often ended up with three forwards behind
the net, and two defensemen hanging back at the blue line. This allowed
the Buffalo defense and forwards, once they snagged the puck, to throw
the puck into a No-Bruin zone (from the slot to the boards) just to deep
for the Bruins defense. Thus the Buffalo breakout was started with one
or more Bruins trapped in deep.
But the real reason the Buffalo Sabres beat the Bruins in the playoffs?
Buffalo had a secret weapon. None other than Buffalo native and Bruins
owner Jeremy Jacobs. Jacobs won financially no matter who won the
series, because he sells the suds and dogs in both buildings. But it
was the Jacob's mindset that sunk the Bruins.. Just about every other
club in the playoffs prepped for the second season by adding veteran
depth. Not Jeremy's crew -- they called up a rambling rotation of AHL
players that did little to add to the Bruins chances, and perhaps
detracted from them by placing playoff rookies in pressure-packed
circumstances. Buffalo, on the other hand, added three veteran players
who had recently been to the Stanley Cup finals: Joe Juneau (with the
Caps), Rhett Warrener (with the Panthers), and Stu Barnes (with the
Panthers, after stopping off in Pittsburgh).
While none of these players threatened to break a playoff scoring record
or take the captaincy away from Michael Peca, every one of them played a
solid series against the Bruins, and they were on of the reasons that
the Sabres could survive the injury to a 40-goal scorer (Satan) and
still win. Boston had trouble getting past an injury to AHLer Landon
Wilson, who had just started to make a place for himself when his
shoulder and his arm got a divorce. Boston had no replacement for Tim
Taylor, their third string checking center, who was able to play only by
becoming Kid Cortisone, shot up with painkillers and anti-inflammatory
drugs every game. Let's see how long it is before the off-season surgery
is announced. Even an injury to Dave Ellett required the call-up from
Providence of Mattias Timander, who wasn't good enough to be on the
Bruins roster all year.
Think we should blame Harry Sinden for this, not Jeremy? Then you must
not have read Jacob's annual "grinch" interview in the Boston Globe.
Jerry rolls out the same old "winning team, winning finances" lecture
every year, citing each of the teams who overspent during the season,
and the sorry end they have come to (he specifically mentioned Colorado,
who by the way is still playing hockey). He then talks about how
improved the Bruins are, and how proud he is that they are run like a
real business, and make money. He often calls them a product, rather
than a team. Well, you know what, they played in the playoffs like a
product, and the Sabres played like a team. The team is still skating,
and the product is headed for the recycling bin. For Bruins fans
everywhere, thanks, Jeremy.
