(AP photo/Eise Amendola) The Bruins advance to the Eastern Conference Semifinals for the second-
consecutive season with a 4-3 victory over the Buffalo Sabres tonight in Game 6.
The Boston Bruins advance to the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs for the second straight season. With a 4-3 victory over the Buffalo Sabres in Game 6 at the TD Garden tonight, the Bruins will face either the Philadelphia Flyers with home-ice advantage; or the Pittsburgh Penguins on the road in the Semifinals.
“Tonight was just, “Finish them off.” We didn’t want to go back to Buffalo. It’s a tough city and a tough rink to play in.” said Bruins' goaltender Tuukka Rask. “After last game, everybody realized we weren’t at our best and we had to get better. I think we showed great character today.”
Last season, the B's finished just one-point shy of the 117-point Presidents' Trophy winners San Jose Sharks. Many people, myself included, pinned the Black-and-Gold to be the Eastern Conference's representatives in the 2008-09 Stanley Cup Finals. But after a sweep of the Montreal Canadiens in Round 1, the B's were upset in the following round by the Carolina Hurricanes.
One year later, a number of players remain from last year's disappointing post-season series, but will try not to let history repeat itself.
“Yeah, it’s a little different too. We had nine days off last year. We are only going to have few days which is nice but not nine days.” said Bruins future Hall-of-Fame forward, Mark Recchi. “Nine days was a long time last year. I felt like we did lose our focus and our competitive edge and that hurt us in the first few games. By the time we found it again, we had to scramble back.”
The experience from last year's heartbreak can be used as a motivating factor – learning from past mistakes.
“Yeah definitely. I mean we kind of sat back when he had those days of rest and we lost our focus and it kind of took us until we were down 3-1 against us going in that series against Carolina.” said Milan Lucic. “So it’s good that we have that experience and we got to make sure as a team that we cant make that same mistake and we have to get ready and be ready from that opening puck drop going into this second series.”
“Sometimes you win in the regular season and then hit a wall.” said David Krejci. “That’s what happened to us last year, you know, hopefully we learned from that and we might be down in the dumps again, and don’t know who we’re going to play, so we just got to play our game, play hard, and do the same thing as we did today.”
One mid-season acquisition move this season was picking-up veteran goal scorer Miroslav Satan. The 35-year old scored just nine goals in 38 regular season games in Boston, but has stepped up his game when it counted in this quarterfinals series. Satan, tied with Recchi, Krejci, and Patrice Bergeron as the Bruins' points-leaders with five, netted two game-winning goals, a plus-2 rating, and 17 shots on goal in six post-season games.
Last year at this time, Satan was a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins – who eventually won the Stanley Cup against the Detroit Red Wings. With Satan's early and laudable start to the playoffs this season in Black-and-Gold, plus his 80 games of post-season experience, the Slovakia native has been an asset to the NHL's 30th ranked goal scoring team during the regular season.
“It is fun to be in the playoffs again and this team maybe lost out on a big opportunity last year, so we will see what happens this year. We will enjoy it while we are here.”
For the second-straight season, the Bruins survive the first seven-game series to move on to the next. But with this season being in the No. 6 seed, will people still say they're still underdogs and have no chance of advancing, like in this series against Buffalo?
Rask says, “Yeah. Who cares?”
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