In Buffalo, the Boston Bruins showed how a contending team responds to playoff pressure. 
On Tuesday night, the Bruins defeated the Sabres, 2-0, for their fifth straight win.
Tuukka Rask made 32 saves for his first shutout of the season.
“[Feeling] well, good enough to play,” Rask said. “It’s maintaining the strength and the health as much as possible and giving it rest when need be and not pushing it too much. Hopefully I’ll be able to play still a long, many, many more months ahead. But I’m feeling good, it doesn’t bother me playing, so that’s a plus.”
Boston moved six points ahead of the absent New York Rangers who lost to the Islanders, 6-1.
“It’s just half skill, half luck, I guess,” Rask said. “It’s kind of desperation more than that at that point when you can’t push over to that side so you just throw anything at the puck you can and hopefully it hits you and today it did.”
Brad Marchand and Connor Clifton were the Bruins’ strikers.
“I didn’t like our third period at all,” Boston head coach Bruce Cassidy said. “I thought we lost our discipline, a lot of chances, we relied on our goaltender, weren’t hard. I didn’t think we played very well and I didn’t they were great early on. Just thought it was two teams that looked like they’ve played a lot of hockey recently and execution was off. We got some huge saves from Tuukka obviously tonight.”
Boston improved to 26-12-6.
“We got ourselves in trouble early, probably puck management, and chased the game,” Sabres head coach Don Granato said. “We chased the game. Rask was good when he had to be, but we didn’t set the pace. They set the pace. And again with the challenge in puck management to keep it simple. We exerted a lot of energy.”
Dustin Tokarski made 36 saves in the loss.
“I’m glad we play them again because we get a chance to look in the mirror, look at the video, speak of this game, and measure ourselves again against a great hockey team and a team that is fighting for every point,” Granato said. “There’s no easy game for us. We’ve spoken that, spoken about that plenty of times, and the next game will not be any easier. … We’re trying to advance and improve our team individually, our players individually, our team collectively, you want to get opposition like this. You learn a lot about yourself. Clearly, we need to elevate based on what we went through today.”
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