Arvidsson scores twice, Bruins hold off another late Sabres rally in Game 2

BUFFALO -- Viktor Arvidsson scored twice for the Boston Bruins, who held off another late third period rally to defeat the Buffalo Sabres 4-2 in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference First Round at KeyBank Center on Tuesday.

David Pastrnak had two assists, and Jeremy Swayman made 34 saves for the Bruins, who are the first wild card from the Eastern Conference.

“I think we skated harder, and battled a little bit harder, and just had our heads over the puck, and won battles and used each other in close areas,” Arvidsson said. “That's how we need to play to be successful. I think that we came out with that mindset and had a pretty good game.”

Bowen Byram and Peyton Krebs scored for the Sabres, who are the No. 1 seed from the Atlantic Division and rallied for a 4-3 win in Game 1 on Sunday. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen allowed four goals on 19 shots before he was replaced by Alex Lyon 16 seconds into the third period. Lyon saved all seven shots he faced in relief.

“They came out hard. They were forechecking a lot harder than they were last game,” Byram said, “and that's not an excuse. We knew they were going to come out hard, but I think it just kind of took us a while to get going again. We’ve got to find a way to start games and take it to them in the first 10 (minutes).”

The best-of-7 series is tied 1-1. Game 3 will be at TD Garden in Boston on Thursday (7 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, truTV, TNT, NESN, MSG-B, TVAS2, SN360).

After a scoreless first period, Arvidsson gave Boston a 1-0 lead at 4:54 of the second. Jonathan Aspirot lobbed the puck out of the Bruins' zone, and Arvidsson, out of the box after serving an extra penalty for Nikita Zadorov, beat Buffalo defenseman Mattias Samuelsson to the puck and slid a backhand five-hole on Luukkonen.

Morgan Geekie made it 2-0 when he flipped the puck on his backhand from center ice and it bounced over Luukkonen’s glove and into the net at 16:29. 

“I honestly just tried to dump it in and got a lucky bounce, and it's nice to see it go in,” Geekie said.

Zacha redirected a feed from Pastrnak in the slot past Luukkonen stick side to push the Bruins' lead to 3-0 at 18:10 on the power play.

“We know their game, and we’ve got to start off better, and we know that,” Sabres forward Zach Benson said. “But there’s positives. We’re playing good in the third, we’re making pushes. But we've got to be better. We know that.”

Arvidsson scored 16 seconds into the third period to make it 4-0, beating Luukkonen high glove side from the left circle on a 2-on-1 with Zacha.

“There’s bad goals, and that happens, but I think four is way too many,” Luukkonen said. “I feel like we had a good fight back in the third, but it kind of kept sliding, I feel like, for me personally and for the team. But I think we learn from this and be better in the next game.”

Byram cut it to 4-1 at 13:54, taking a pass from Beck Malenstyn above the right circle and beating Swayman with a wrist shot over the glove.

Krebs then narrowed it to 4-2 when he backhanded the rebound of Rasmus Dahlin's shot from the point through Swayman’s pads at 15:08.

“I knew they would respond today,” Boston coach Marco Sturm said. “It wasn’t terrible how we played in Game 1, but we knew we needed to be just a little bit better. The guys played great today. They played to our identity, let’s put it that way. That was Bruins hockey, right from start to finish. That’s why we got the big win.”

NOTES: Pastrnak is the fourth player in Bruins history with multiple assists in each of the first two road games in a postseason. … It was Pastrnak’s 24th career multipoint playoff game, moving him past Craig Janney, Ken Hodge, Cam Neely and Rick Middleton. … Pastrnak’s assist on Zacha’s goal made him the fourth player in Boston history to reach 40 career power-play points in the playoffs. … The playoff win was the 10th of Swayman’s career to tie Byron Dafoe for 10th most in Bruins history.