Bruins Drop Game 4 to Sabres 6-1, ‘Got to Reset Here Quick’

BOSTON –– The Boston Bruins dropped Game 4 to the Buffalo Sabres 6-1 on Sunday at TD Garden. They now trail the first-round series 3-1.

“We should be embarrassed because it was embarrassing. Guys know me, and we’re going to talk about it and analyze this,” head coach Marco Sturm said. “But at the end of the day, we have to move on, too. I am embarrassed; we all should be. We are all pissed. We’ll talk about it, then we have to move on.”

The Sabres came out firing, grabbing a 4-0 lead by the end of the first period.

Peyton Krebs scored the first of the night at 4:17 before a tip-in tally from Josh Doan at 7:10 made it 2-0. Zach Benson deflected one in at 9:15, and Bowen Byram’s wristshot at 14:24 brought it to 4-0.

“I don’t have any answers right now. It was just an embarrassing performance. We picked a bad time to have one of those,” Charlie McAvoy said. “But we’re not out of this thing yet; we’ve got to remember that. We’ve got to reset here quick.”

After a scoreless second period, Buffalo potted two more in the closing frame. Beck Malenstyn put the Sabres ahead 5-0 at 5:08, and Alex Tuch followed it up with his third goal of the series at 6:32 to bring it to 6-0.

“We know they’re good in transition, and we just kept feeding them that way. It was not good enough,” Elias Lindholm said. “I think we looked very disconnected, very spread out…Just started that way and kind of snowballed from there.”

​Joonas Korpisalo subsequently came in for Jeremy Swayman with 13:19 remaining in the game; Swayman made 23 saves on 29 shots. Korpisalo finished the evening with six stops.

“Both of our goalies have been rock solid for us all year. They haven’t left us out to dry one game this year,” Hampus Lindholm said. “They deserve more from us. We just have to look each other in the mirror and go out there and put on a team effort, because the only way out of this is together.”

​Sean Kuraly got the Bruins on the board with 39 seconds left in regulation for the final 6-1 standing. Mark Kastelic and Andrew Peeke picked up the assists on the play.

The Bruins now return to Buffalo for Game 5 on Tuesday night at KeyBank Center.

“We are a proud group in here,” David Pastrnak said. “We’ve been battling together as a team all season long. Put ourselves in this position together, and we need to stick together. Go to Buffalo and bring this series back to Boston.”