“Yeah, you can ask me that,’’ said Chara, mulling the question whether wins over Atlanta and Buffalo could prove to be the club’s turning point. “We know we have to keep playing like this, keep battling. For sure it’s a good sign that we beat two quality, aggressive teams, but we don’t want to get too high or too low about it.
“Let’s just say it’s a first positive step on a four-game road trip.’’
The start here was humble, the Bruins badly outplayed and outshot, 8-4, in the opening period when the Sabres built a 1-0 lead compliments of a Paul Gaustad tip-in on the power play at 4:20.
The Bruins needed the first 20 minutes to shake out the cobwebs after the shootout win in Atlanta, and then a flight here that didn’t get them in their hotel until after 1 a.m.
“I’m not going to say it was expected,’’ said coach Claude Julien, whose charges will fly to St. Louis tomorrow for a meeting with the Blues Monday night. “But we stayed off the ice in the morning because we needed some rest.
“You could kind of predict that we’d need time to get going.’’
Much perkier from the drop of the puck in the second, the Bruins rolled up a 14-3 shot advantage and moved into a 1-1 tie when Milan Lucic nailed in his first of the season at 10:54. Flying up ice with Byron Bitz, Lucic nailed a short one-timer by Ryan Miller on the left side after Bitz dished over a pinpoint relay from just to the right of the slot.
Nice hands by Bitz and an even slicker finish by Lucic, who returned to the lineup the night before after missing nearly five weeks because of a fractured right index finger.
“I think he was yelling,’’ said Bitz, referring to his new linemate, Lucic, who might remain part of the trio with Bitz and Steve Begin for a while. “He did a really good job driving to the net and then a great job finishing it off, too. He yelled and I looked, and there was just that little bit of room under of their guys’ sticks to get it to him.’’
