Sabres storm back with four late goals to stun Bruins in Game 1

Buffalo turned a playoff opener into a referendum on resilience, scoring three times in a 4:34 burst late in the third period and beating the Bruins 4-3 at KeyBank Center. Mattias Samuelsson delivered the go-ahead goal with 3:24 left, and Alex Tuch added the fourth as the Sabres, in their first Stanley Cup Playoff game since April 26, 2011, seized a 1-0 lead in the Eastern Conference First Round.

The comeback carried weight beyond one win. It was Buffalo’s first home playoff victory and its first overall postseason victory since a 1-0 result over Philadelphia in Game 4 of a first-round series on April 20, 2011. That gap defined the Sabres’ absence for much of the past decade and a half, but it no longer applies: Buffalo had already ended an NHL-record 14-season playoff drought and captured its first Atlantic Division title in 2025-26. In the final minutes against Boston, the Sabres looked less like a team happy to be back than one capable of surviving postseason stress.

Boston arrived with its own credentials. The Bruins entered as the East’s first wild card after clinching with a 4-0 win over the New Jersey Devils, and they had taken the regular-season series 3-1 from Buffalo. Before puck drop, Bruins coach Marco Sturm’s comments about Boston being bigger, stronger and more physical became part of the backdrop, and Buffalo answered with pace and urgency when the game tightened.

The Bruins still had chances to salvage it. Morgan Geekie and Elias Lindholm scored, and David Pastrnak finished with three points and cut the deficit to 4-3 with seven seconds left. But Boston’s late push could not erase the collapse that preceded it. For a veteran contender, that matters: playoff series are often decided not by the team that starts with the edge, but by the one that can absorb chaos without losing structure in the last five minutes.

For Buffalo, the final minutes served as proof of legitimacy. The Sabres did not merely protect an emotional home return; they executed through the decisive stretch and left Boston with the burden of explaining how a two-goal lead disappeared in a building that had waited 15 years for this moment.