Boston Bruins' Compete Level Will Be Tested By Buffalo Sabres

The Boston Bruins are 12-2-0 against Northeast Division cohabitants and 16-11-0 against those teams who entered Tuesday night’s NHL action outside of the playoff picture.

Their winning percentage in the former scenario (.857) would virtually lock away the President’s Trophy if spread over an 82-game schedule. Do the same with their success rate in the latter category (.593) and they would not even be in a position to host Game 7 in the first round of the playoffs.

One of these contrary trends will have to take to the sideline Wednesday night when the Bruins visit the Buffalo Sabres, who are in a footrace with the Montreal Canadiens to stay out of the divisional cellar.

Boston has gone 11 games without composing a set of back-to-back victories, blowing its latest opportunity when the plebeian Carolina Hurricanes polished off an unlikely four-game season-series sweep last Thursday.

On the Bruins’ end, anyway, all logic was defied that night. Their hunger to lace an otherwise vinegary matchup with a delectable topping ought to have given them the necessary fuel to make their man-for-man supremacy show up on the scoreboard.

Instead, they fell back into old patterns and gradually let the Hurricanes bury them, 3-0.

Wednesday’s fixture at the First Niagara Center bears its comparisons and contrasts to the Carolina card. The Sabres are separated with the Hurricanes by one point in the lower echelon of the Eastern Conference standings, but so far have mustered one out of a possible four points in their six-game slate against Boston.

It is now on the Bruins to harbor and enact a fastidious appetite for divisional dominance and a thirst to remain unbeaten against a team that gave them noticeable fits in previous seasons. Anything substantially short of that could inevitably awaken a hibernating horde of front-running Sabres and allow Buffalo’s supplementary depth players to pick up more traction.

The Sabres are unbeaten in their last four games—3-0-1—but have subsisted on stingy goaltending via Ryan Miller and negligible input from most of their leaned-on scorers.

Buffalo’s top point-getter, Jason Pominville, has a 0-2-2 log and a minus-three rating over his last six games. Derek Roy splashed a seven-game production drought with a goal against the New York Islanders last Saturday.

Off-and-on Bruins nemesis Drew Stafford has a single goal and solitary assist within his last 12 games. And Luke Adam, who is fourth among all Sabres with 10 goals to date and fifth on the team with 20 points, is on a teeth-gnashing 19-game pointless skid.

In short, Buffalo has had more than its share of we’ll-take-it moments of late, outscoring its opponents 7-5 over this recent point-getting streak with three of the last four games decided in a shootout. The Sabres most recently deleted a 3-1 deficit after the first intermission and topped the Islanders through a 4-3 decision in one-on-ones.

Their resilience could meet a far less generous test at the hands of the Bruins Wednesday night. But that is only if Claude Julien’s pupils are raring to follow up on their smooth, crisp, 4-1 victory over the Washington Capitals on Sunday.

Much like Buffalo, Boston has not done much to separate itself from its adversaries in its first four games since the All-Star break, accumulating a 9-9 scoring differential in that span. The chief difference is that Patrice Bergeron (three assists) and Brad Marchand (two goals, two helpers) have both produced more than every individual Sabre.

In addition, the rest of the Bruins’ top nine forwards have something tangible or intangible to build upon from their win over the Capitals.

Milan Lucic figures to be a Buffalo lightning rod at least once more as Wednesday marks his first on-ice confrontation with Miller since his controversial hit on the Sabres’ stopper in a Nov. 12 meeting.

This time around, he should be more focused on beating Miller with the biscuit and continuing to percolate chemistry with new linemates Chris Kelly and Rich Peverley.

Meanwhile, David Krejci and new wingers Benoit Pouliot and Jordan Caron each have yet to splash their own scoring droughts of three games or more. Caron, in particular, flaunted enough promise when he thrust four shots on the Capitals’ cage on Sunday, but Wednesday would be the right time for himself and his linemates to upgrade their input.

After all, a guaranteed split when the season series is barely half over is at stake, as is momentum to carry into a tough two-game homestand and subsequent six-game road trip.