Bruins Notes: David Pastrnak Frustrated Following Loss To Sabres In Overtime
The Boston Bruins ended their brief two-game homestand with a 3-2 overtime loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Monday night, and David Pastrnak wasn’t happy one bit.
In fact, Pastrnak was so fired up that he approached an official in protest of a tripping call made against Marat Khusnutdinov in overtime. It wasn’t an end-of-the-world call, but the overall tensions built up triggered the outburst that, even after the defeat, Pastrnak stood by.
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The Bruins, however, weren’t exonerated from their share of the blame. Pastrnak made sure to hold the locker room accountable after the team dropped to 30-30-9 with its third consecutive loss.
“I feel like we made some big mistakes,” Pastrnak told reporters at TD Garden, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “They had a big chance in the third (period) so we didn’t get many power play opportunities. Like I said, I think it could’ve gone either way. Obviously a good effort from our group but a very frustrating loss. Yeah, tough one.”
Pastrnak continued: “I felt like if anybody should get power plays in overtime, it should have been us. I think they’d been having power plays all game long so that’s jusy my opinion and that’s why I was mad. … Frustrating that they got the power play opportunity in overtime, but at the same time we made the mistakes on the puck to make it happen.”
Boston demonstrated some timely urgency in the first period after Buffalo’s Peyton Krebs scored to break open the score, as Pavel Zacha and Morgan Geekie went back-to-back. But even with a 2-1 lead entering the second period, the Bruins didn’t have the necessary offensive firepower to keep up with the Sabres throughout the rest of regulation and that came with a costly price.
The Sabres countered on their golden opportunity, taking picture-perfect advantage of the power play in overtime — something the Bruins failed to do twice throughout the night. Buffalo’s Alex Tuch netted the game-decider at 4:47 in overtime to seal the deal and send Boston to the exits in disappointing fashion, for the 18th time this season on its home ice.
It was definitely a tough pill to swallow, but the team isn’t looking at the defeat as a complete loss.
“For the most part, our checking game was better tonight then it had been, and that was something that we talked about,” Bruins head coach Joe Sacco told reporters, per team-provided video. “We wanted to check better in all three zone. We didn’t probably generate enough offense and that comes back to not playing behind enough maybe or not playing off the shot like I said before. But I did think our commitment to the checking game was a step in the right direction and where it needed to be.”
Here are more notes from Monday night’s Bruins-Sabres game:
— Geekie’s go-ahead goal in the first period didn’t just put the Bruins up, 2-1, it also marked the 26-year-old’s 23rd of the season. That’s a new career-high for Geekie, who is now nine assists and three points shy of setting career-best marks in those categories next.
— Boston got outshot, 30-19, by Buffalo. Zacha, however, doesn’t attribute that discrepancy to any looming late-season concern.
“I think the first two games, after the (trade) deadline, we’re playing better,” Zacha told reporters, per team-provided video. “We got a lot of more chances too. So I think that’s something that we have to dig in more as a player and create more chances, being more desperate in these games that we need to win.”
— Bruins goaltender Joonas Korpisalo surrendered three goals while tallying 27 saves. The 30-year-old has now gone 1-0-1 with a .920 save percentage this season against the Sabres through two starts.
— Buffalo won two of its first three meetings against Boston. The regular-season finale between the Bruins and Sabres will take place April 6.
— The Bruins will next begin a five-game road trip, starting in Las Vegas on Thursday night. Puck drop from T-Mobile Arena is scheduled for 10 p.m. ET, and you can catch the game, along with an hour of pregame coverage, live on NESN.