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The Buffalo Sabres made their first playoff game in 14 years, one they would never forget.
The Sabres scored four goals in the last eight minutes of the game to come back and beat the Boston Bruins 4-3 in electrifying fashion to take a 1-0 series lead on Sunday night at KeyBank Center.
The Bruins quieted the raucous Buffalo crowd when star center Morgan Geekie buried a slap shot into the back of the net from the high slot to give them a 1-0 lead about 11 minutes into the first period.
The Bruins, after a scoreless second period, extended their lead in the third period. With just over a minute in the third period, Elias Lindholm snuck a wrist shot behind Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen for a 2-0 lead.
The Sabres finally broke through against Bruins goalie Jeremy Swayman when Team USA star Tage Thompson snuck around from behind the net and backhanded the puck between Swayman and the post to cut the deficit in half.
Thompson, who led the Sabres with 40 goals in the regular season, wasn’t done yet. About three and a half minutes after he scored the first goal, he snagged the puck away from a Bruins defenseman in front of the net and snapped one home past Swayman to tie the game at 2-2.
The Sabres took the lead just 52 seconds later, with the deafening crowd still jubilant from Thompson’s second goal.
As the public address announcer was reading off the game-tying goal, Mattias Samuelsson ripped a shot from the slot past Swayman to give the team a 3-2 lead.
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“It was probably the loudest I’ve ever heard in my life,” Luukkonen said. “The fans are the ones who have waited so long. And so I’m really happy that we grinded out a win tonight.”
The Sabres scored an empty-net goal to make it 4-2, but the Bruins scored one shortly after to make it 4-3, and the Sabres held on for the win.
“These are the kind of games you live for,” Thompson said, via NHL.com. “You want to be in these games. It’s been a long time coming.”
For the Sabres, the comeback win had been a long time coming. They went 5,473 days between playoff games since losing Game 7 of a 2011 first-round series to the Philadelphia Flyers.
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The Sabres became the NHL’s eighth team to rally from a two-or-more-goal deficit in the final 10 minutes and win in regulation. And it marked just the second time Buffalo won a playoff game when trailing by two in the third period.
“You could feel the building shaking, even upstairs I guess they said the same thing,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said, according to NHL.com. “The atmosphere was unbelievable. It was great to give our fans that third period.”
The Sabres will look to take a 2-0 series lead when they play the Bruins on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. ET.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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