Sabres rally – Buffalo turned momentum into a 3-1 win in Game 3, with Bowen Byram tying after a missed penalty shot and Alex Tuch breaking the tie in the third. Series now favors the Sabres 2-1.
A playoff series can swing on one shift—and Thursday night’s Game 3 felt like exactly that for Buffalo.
The Buffalo Sabres scored three unanswered answers in stretches that mattered. rallying for a 3-1 win over the Boston Bruins to take a 2-1 lead in their first-round NHL Stanley Cup playoff series.. For the Sabres. the victory wasn’t just about the final score; it was about the timing—tying the game shortly after Boston squandered a crucial opportunity. then taking control in the third.
Jeremy Swayman made 25 saves for Boston. but the Bruins couldn’t slow down Buffalo’s key contributors once the game opened up.. Bowen Byram scored a minute after Boston missed a penalty shot. Alex Tuch broke a third-period tie by firing past a screened goalie. and Noah Ostlund added an empty-net goal with 84 seconds left.. Tanner Jeannot had given the Bruins an early lead in the second period. starting a familiar pattern: Boston grabbed the advantage first. then needed to fend off Buffalo’s late-game responses.
Buffalo’s win also came with a goalie storyline that matters in short series.. Alex Lyon. making his first postseason start. stopped 24 shots and gave the Sabres a steady presence that Boston couldn’t exploit.. The Bruins. meanwhile. had their own recent grind in front of them—after scoring first in multiple games. they were still searching for the kind of consistency that separates teams in a best-of-seven.
The way Buffalo answered pressure was especially telling.. Boston had a chance to go up 2-0 when a broken stick near the Buffalo net turned into a turnover. setting up a penalty shot after Rasmus Dahlin took Tanner Jeannot down.. Arvidsson’s shot went wide, and that miss changed the energy of the building.. A minute later. Byram one-timed a shot to tie the game. turning a moment that could have tilted the series deeper toward Boston into a quick reset for Buffalo.
That kind of swing is what playoff football and basketball fans often describe as “momentum,” but hockey makes it measurable.. One missed chance at high leverage can force a team into a defensive posture for the next sequence.. And once the Sabres sensed they could break the game open. they did—especially through Tuch’s third-period go-ahead goal after he grabbed a loose puck.
There’s also a larger context behind the Sabres’ surge.. Buffalo ended a long postseason drought by winning the Atlantic Division. reclaiming home-ice advantage through regular-season performance that had the team coming in with momentum and belief.. Still, the postseason has punished them before—particularly when it came to special teams.. The Sabres have struggled on the power play, failing to score on their first 13 man advantages in the series.. Against Boston. they didn’t need a breakthrough on the advantage to win. but the issue remains a looming question for future games.
For Boston. the challenge now is avoiding a familiar trap: chasing the lead early. then getting forced into the second half of a series without answers.. The Bruins have scored first in each of the first three games. but Buffalo has responded with enough structure and enough timing to pull ahead overall.. That’s a different kind of discomfort than being outmatched from the start—it’s the feeling that a team is doing what it should. yet still falling behind on the scoreboard.
The immediate next step is Game 4 Sunday in Boston. where the Bruins will need a win to keep the series from becoming an uphill climb.. If Boston wants to reclaim control. it will likely need to do two things at once: tighten up around the moments that create penalty-shot opportunities and stop surrendering loose-puck opportunities in the third period.. Buffalo. for its part. will want to keep turning mistakes into goals. and to find even small special-teams improvements because the game’s margins only get thinner from here.
If the series has shown one clear lesson so far. it’s that home-ice advantage doesn’t automatically decide anything—execution does.. And with the Sabres now holding a 2-1 lead, the next question isn’t whether either team can score early.. It’s whether they can control what happens right after a missed chance.