Nobody is expecting either the Buffalo Sabres or the Boston Bruins to run away with their first-round Stanley Cup playoff series.
Clearly, the Sabres should be the favorites after a strong regular season, and they have some young star players in Tage Thompson, Rasmus Dahlin, and Bowen Byram, among others, and an experienced head coach in Lindy Ruff, who has seen and done it all at this point.
Just as clearly, the Bruins have a distinctly more experienced team with both David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy boasting Stanley Cup Finals games on their hockey resumes, and with a team that, according to their head coach, is going to readily lean into the nastiness and physical game.
Sturm on the matchup with Buffalo:
— Bridgette Proulx (@bridgetteproulx) April 17, 2026
"We're excited. We are bigger, stronger, we are more physical. We just have to be smart. But, we're going to go after them." pic.twitter.com/XSoTCx108z
Seemingly that is to the chagrin of the Sabres media and fans in Buffalo based on the social media reactions this week and based on the Buffalo players and coaches now being asked to react to what the B’s are doing rather than the other way around.
Reaction from the Sabres after Boston Bruins head coach Marco Sturm said his B’s were bigger, stronger, and more physical going into this first round series against the Buffalo.#NHLBruins
— Mark Allred (@BlackAndGold277) April 18, 2026
🚨👇👀👇🚨 pic.twitter.com/w7FZAkiCxT
But there are areas in both teams where they hold clear advantages, and there may not be a bigger check mark for the B’s than in the goaltending department. Jeremy Swayman is an experienced playoff performer coming off a very strong rebound campaign where he finished with a 31-18-4 record and a .908 save percentage behind a B’s team that was admittedly shaky defensively in front of him at times this season.
“I think there was a lot of growth,” said Swayman of this season. “I think I was where I wanted to be mentally and physically, and it couldn’t have happened without my experiences up to this point. I’m doing to my best to stay in the moment and dive into every game with full intention and full focus and a mindset to get the win.
“I think we can be confident in this room knowing that we have [game] experience at that [playoff] level. And we can have a really joyful aggression knowing that…going into important games knowing we know how to perform and have success against a skilled team like that.”
The top goalies of the 2025-2026 regular season https://t.co/RtBkDPbkvW pic.twitter.com/xy4xMcNxRD
— MoneyPuck.com (@MoneyPuckdotcom) April 17, 2026
On the Buffalo side, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Alex Lyon both shared time with pretty solid seasons with the Sabres, but there’s an old adage in the Stanley Cup playoffs that if a team doesn’t have a clear-cut No. 1 goalie in the postseason, then they really don’t have a goalie at all.
UPL should get the net to start the playoff series for his first career Stanley Cup playoff experience, but the Sabres are in that difficult space where a soft goal or two could get everybody talking about a goalie change, and a goalie controversy can take on a life of its own in a playoff series, as we’ve all seen play out many times over.
There will be no such phenomenon with the Bruins as Swayman is going to get the mail for the Black and Gold and posted a sparkling .933 save percentage in his last season for the Bruins, where he spearheaded a series win over the Maple Leafs before ultimately falling to the Stanley Cup champs in Florida.
The 27-year-old has a career .922 save percentage in the playoffs, and it was his ability to elevate his performance in the postseason that gave Boston the confidence to sign him to an eight-year, $66 million contract before he’d even established himself with a single season as a No. 1 goalie during the NHL regular season.
It’s a confidence that permeates every part of Swayman’s game and even played a part in the heated contract negotiations a year ago that eventually sidetracked his season before this year’s strong rebound performance.
“I don't think Jeremy's ever given anybody a second thought about where his confidence [level is] in himself and his abilities are, and that's great from a goaltender, from any type of player,” said Don Sweeney. “And the work that he backs that up with, obviously going to the World Championships [last summer] and leading that team to a gold medal, says a lot about where his mindset was, from the standpoint of not flushing [last season’s struggles], and sort of taking responsibility for not playing as well.
“He wanted to get right back to playing, to winning, and he had goals in mind. He certainly wanted to be part of the Olympic team [this season]. But most importantly, he was ready to go from Day One of camp, thankfully he was at camp and was ready to go and just refocus, hit the reset button, put the work in and be the goalie we know he's capable of being.”
He’s done that now and has the playoff resume to boot, and that gives the Bruins the kind of ace in the hole that could be a difference-maker if they hope to pull out a first-round playoff series against a talented Buffalo hockey club.
ONE TIMERS
• Congrats to Charlie McAvoy on being named the Boston Bruins nominee for the Bill Masterton Trophy, awarded each season to the player who best demonstrates "qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey."
There were a number of strong candidates on the Black and Gold this season, but McAvoy was a bit of a no-brainer in posting his best NHL campaign while returning from a serious shoulder infection last season, suffered during the 4 Nations Faceoff, and a series of challenging on-ice incidents this season that involved significant facial injuries and lost teeth.
It felt like the adversity brought out the best in the hard-charging Bruins defenseman and also pushed him into a different level of leadership for this group of B’s players as well, though he fell short of saying that he’d do it all over again, given the significant discomfort and pain that this season heaped upon him.
And it’s tough to blame him based on the serious dental work that still awaits him when these Stanley Cup playoffs are over.
“It’s like a double-edged sword because you have to go through some kind of struggle to get nominated for it,” said McAvoy with a smile. “This season has been really challenging for my family, and we lean on each other for everything. I’m really grateful for the group in here, the guys, and [Don Sweeney] and the front office through all of those times. The coaching staff is also giving me time [to recover] and stuff.
“Really, it took a whole village for me to get back and to be in a good frame of mind. For me it was a great year, and I had a lot of fun playing, but collectively for this group to make the playoffs I think we’ve surprised a lot of people, and we want to keep doing that. If in November you’d tell me that we’d make the playoffs, I’d get some personal accolades too and I’d have a gold medal, I would take this season. It was tough…it really was. But the New Year is when I stopped and said we’re gonna leave all the old stuff in 2025 and 2026 is going to be our year. This has been a great start to it, everybody is doing amazing and now we’re headed to the playoffs. It’s been a great year.”
*Bruins fans won’t have to wonder about whether 19-year-old James Hagens is going to be in the playoff lineup or not on Sunday night, as Marco Sturm sounded pretty bullish in the rookie jumping right into the postseason fray against a skilled Buffalo Sabres team.
The expectation is that Hagens is going to play left wing on a “kid line” with Marat Khusnutdinov and Fraser Minten, and that he is going to get reps on the second power play unit at the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs. A lot will depend on how that young trio fares against a largely inexperienced Sabres crew, and how much impact Hagens can make if he’s getting 30-40 seconds at a time on a second man advantage unit for the Black and Gold.
Still, there was no denying that Hagens showed some good detail to his game in terms of winning puck battles along the wall and making the right reads offensively and defensively in his two NHL games played at the end of the regular season, with admittedly not much on the line for the B’s at that point.
“It’s just the last two games, he gave me a lot of excitement,” said Sturm of Hagens. “He did a pretty good job with the puck, managing the puck, playing without the puck, never got in trouble as a line with [Fraser] Minten and [Marat Khusnutdinov], I feel like there’s some chemistry.
“That’s his biggest strength, is on the power play. So we would be stupid not to use him — see if he makes a difference or not. But yes, if he plays, he will definitely be on the power play.”
*It felt like the Bruins have not had a head coach in a long time that’s been bold in terms of making waves in the Stanley Cup playoffs, but that is exactly what Sturm did before the first game was even played. He rattled everybody’s cages in Buffalo by making statements that the Bruins were bigger and more physical than the Sabres, and that they were “going to come after them” in the playoff games.
"We’ll see where it goes. We know how we have to play. We’re excited. We’re bigger, stronger, and we are more physical,” said Sturm, while also very much stressing that it’s about the Bruins forcing their style of play than worrying about what their playoff opponents were going to do. “We just have to be smart. But we’re gonna go after them."
Let the games begin!