Score: Bruins 5 | Sabres 1
Shots: BOS 38 | BUF 30
Sabres Goals: Arttu Ruotsalainen (3)
Bruins Goals: Brad Marchand (25), Matt Grzelcyk (4), David Pastrnak (18), Nick Ritchie (11), David Krejci (6)
Observation 1 | T
Arttu Ruotsalainen continued a healthy scoring pace for someone who just made their NHL debut recently.
Tonight marked his eighth career NHL game and Ruotsalainen scored his third goal.
Arttu Ruotsalainen with his 3rd of the year to tie it up for the Sabres!#LesGoBuffalo pic.twitter.com/qE2cj0zzNo
— Hockey Daily 365 (@HockeyDaily365) April 23, 2021
While the rest of Buffalo’s offense struggled, at least Ruotsalainen continued to show everyone why he might have belonged up in Buffalo a little sooner than he had been recalled.
Observation 2 | Power Outage.
The Buffalo Sabres really have no one to blame but themselves for tonight’s loss against the Boston Bruins.
While Boston scored five goals, MoneyPuck had their “all situations” expected goals at 1.66.
Meanwhile, Buffalo’s “all situations” expected goals ended at 2.46
The Sabres went 0-for-5 on the power play, managing only five shots in total with the man advantage.
When talented teams like the Boston Bruins become undisciplined and provide ample opportunity to take advantage of them, you must not squander the opportunities.
Unfortunately, Buffalo did just that.
Observation 3 | Borgen Returns.
Defenseman Will Borgen returned to the Sabres lineup for the first time since February 20 against the New Jersey Devils, when he broke his forearm.
In his return to the ice, Borgen was paired with fellow rookie Jacob Bryson and played 18:20.
Borgen and Bryson saw success against the Bruins, despite the lopsided loss. The young defensive paring had over a 77% expected goal percentage when playing 5-on-5, which ended up being the best among all defensive pairings – for both Buffalo and Boston.
There are a handful of games remaining for the Sabres to find out if the young kids can hang in the NHL, but it appears that they are certainly up to the task.