Sabres get hat tricks from Tage Thompson, JJ Peterka in win over Bruins
After five wins in their previous seven games (5-1-1), the Bruins took a short-lived 1-0 lead on Mason Lohrei's goal in the first period. The Sabres then rattled off the next four goals to ice it.
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Jeremy Swayman, making his 12th start in the last 15 games, fell to 16-17-4, surrendering six goals.
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Bruins captain Brad Marchand scored a rare power-play goal with 10:13 gone in the third, briefly cutting the deficit to 4-2. But only 30 seconds later, a streaking Peterka raced over the blue line, split two Bruins defensemen, and snapped his second goal of the night by Swayman.
Zach Benson added a power-play goal with 12.1 seconds left, rounding out the beatdown.
The Sabres, mired at the bottom of the Eastern Conference and meandering toward yet another postseason DNQ, popped in a pair of second-period goals that had them in charge of a 3-1 game at the second intermission.
Thompson, who delivered the 1-1 equalizer late in the first period, provided the go-ahead strike at 4:43 of the middle period, finishing off a devilish tic-tac-toe play around the Bruins' soft coverage in their own end. Thompson, parked just off the left post, without a Bruins defender within a stick's reach, swept home the 2-1 lead.
Slightly less than two minutes later, Peterka scored off the rush, making it three rush goals for the night for the Sabres, the Bruins making the entries all too easy. The German-born Peterka, mimicking the shot by Lohrei that provided the Bruins with a 1-0 lead in the first, snapped the puck by Swayman from the left faceoff dot.
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The Bruins, already depleted on the back end with the injuries to Hampus Lindholm and Charlie McAvoy, were down yet another key blue-line contributor with the absence of Brandon Carlo. Now their senior backliner in residence, Carlo made the trip, but remained at the hotel all day, sidelined by what interim coach Joe Sacco said was an illness.
Only 12:44 into the first, it was Lohrei, one of the Bruins' younger defensemen, who scored the opening goal. The fleet of foot Lohrei deked around Benson near the top of the left circle and snapped in a shot from the faceoff dot, eluding goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen to the glove side.
The Bruins entered the night without a goal from their backline crew in 22 of the last 24 games. With one shot, one of only five the Bruins mustered in the first, Lohrei changed the narrative. It was the first time this season that Lohrei struck for the game's opening goal.
The lead didn't hold up for long, with Thompson, striking only 55 seconds later. The Bruins, sloppy on a line change as Thompson raced off the Buffalo bench, were negligent in closing off the prime scoring area in their own end. Thompson raced in and smacked a one-time laser by Swayman for the equalizer.
It was Thompson's 99th goal over the last three seasons, pulling him into a tie with the Rangers' Artemi Panarin for 12th among NHL forwards. Colorado's Cale Makar leads defensemen with 56 goals over the same stretch. Thompson followed in the second with his 100th.
The Sabres outshot the Bruins, 10-5, in the opening 20:00, continuing a disturbing pattern of late for the Black and Gold. They were outshot in nine of their previous 10 games, on the short end of a 329-218 margin.
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The Bruins entered the night 0 for 5 on the power play in their last three games. On Saturday, in their 3-1 win over the Avalanche, they were not awarded a power play for only the second time this season. Finally, midway through the second, they were awarded a chance on the power play when Mattias Samuelsson hooked Pavel Zacha. But yet again, the Bruins didn't produce a serious threat on net across the two minutes.
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Indianapolis Star
39 minutes ago
- Indianapolis Star
'This is a low right now': Pacers let 3-1 NBA Finals lead vanish with 17-point 4th quarter
INDIANAPOLIS -- Tyrese Haliburton's hopeless heave from the logo caromed hard off the left side of the backboard and he and the other four Pacers on the floor immediately turned and headed for the tunnel as fast as they could go without running. ABC's cameras picked up Haliburton telling teammates, "Let's win one on the road, we alright." It was, on one hand, necessary optimism from the face of the franchise in a time of despair but also seemed to be a mechanism to delay emotionally processing what the last 12 minutes had cost the Pacers. Indiana's lead on the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Friday night was never an overwhelming one. It peaked at 10 points with 2:08 to go in the third quarter, and that double-figure edge lasted all of 96 seconds. They entered the fourth quarter with a seven-point advantage, and no one has done more in these playoffs to show exactly how fragile a seven-point lead is than the never-dead Pacers. Still, the advantage felt bigger because of how thoroughly the Pacers had dominated fourth quarters in this series. In Games 1-3, they outscored the Thunder by a combined margin of 100-73 in the fourth quarter with a dramatic comeback in Game 1 and a dominant finish in Game 3. It also felt bigger because the Thunder seemed winded by the Pacers' relentless pressure and the deafening Gainbridge Fieldhouse crowd was edging close to delirium at the prospect of a commanding 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals and being just one win away from an NBA title, something the franchise had never experienced. But for one of few occasions in this postseason it was the Pacers who were walking off the floor stunned and wondering how exactly a late lead had gotten away from them. They lost Game 4 111-104 to the Thunder after being outscored 31-17 in the fourth quarter in their first sub-20-point quarter since the first period in their Game 5 win over Cleveland in the Eastern Conference semifinals. They led by four points with 3:20 to go but were outscored 12-1 the rest of the way, missing their last five field goals as well as three of their last four free throws. So now the series is tied 2-2 and the Pacers have lost the home-court advantage they stole in Game 1 on Haliburton's game-winning jumper with 0.3 seconds to go. It's essentially a best-of-three series with Game 5 on Monday and Game 7 on June 22 to be played in Oklahoma City and the series guaranteed to go at least six games. "It's frustrating, of course," Haliburton said in his post-game news conference, acknowledging reality without giving in to any sense of impending doom. "You want to win that game, especially a game at home where, like you said, you have the lead late. But that's just not how the cookie crumbled today. So take a shower, watch film and see where we can get better and get ready to go for Game 5." The Pacers seemed to be at a loss for exactly why the cookie crumbled that way, except everyone interviewed from the team or coaching staff seemed to have settled on the term "stagnant" to explain the offense. It was certainly difficult to argue with that assessment as the Pacers' ball-movement-based offense registered just one assist in the period and zero after the 10:56 mark. The Pacers made just 5 of 18 field goals in the fourth quarter. They missed all eight of their 3-pointers and their three turnovers in the period all happened at inopportune times. "We just got too stagnant," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. "The ball was not being advanced quickly enough. We weren't creating problems and we were up against the clock a lot. Things got very difficult." Carlisle acknowledged that the Thunder had a lot to do with making it difficult. With the prospect of a nearly insurmountable deficit staring them in the face, the Thunder dialed up pressure, fought through screens, stepped up on the glass and did whatever they had to do to keep the Pacers from functioning as they planned. The Thunder got excellent point-of-attack work from ace defenders Luguentz Dort, Jalen Williams and Alex Caruso, who spent all night navigating a bevy of screens but still had enough juice left to stay with their primary assignments for most of the period. When they had to switch, however, MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and 7-1 big man Chet Holmgren held their own and Holmgren in particular kept smaller Pacers ball-handlers in front of him at key moments. " I just thought we showed great will in the game," Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. "I thought we really hung in there in the third. I thought that was the key to the game. They really had the wind to their back. We had some deflating plays. It was an easy game to give up on. We kept it in striking distance, 8, 10, then able to close it in the fourth. I thought Lu in particular set an unbelievable tone defensively in the fourth quarter. That was kind of contagious." Haliburton scored eight of the Pacers' 17 points in the period and was responsible for three of the five field goals with all of them being driving layups. However, he was 3 of 7 from the floor in the period, missing on all three of his 3-point attempts. The rest of the team, however, was 2 of 11 from the floor and managed just one field goal after a run-out dunk by forward Obi Toppin with 10:56 to go. Haliburton acknowledged that the failed overall operation falls on him as the point guard. The ball frequently got stuck above the 3-point line with no direction and the offense failed to involve Pascal Siakam down the stretch, even though he was the team's leading scorer on the night with 20 points. The three-time All-Star and two-time All-NBA pick with a championship ring from his time with the Raptors managed just one field goal attempt in the fourth quarter -- a missed contested 3-pointer with 10:18 to go. "I have to do a better job of keeping pace in the game, Haliburton said. "Probably did a much better job of that last game, especially down the stretch, keeping pace, getting rebounds and really pushing it. I think we have to do a better job of when we do get stops getting out running. A lot of times in that fourth we were fouling too much, taking the ball out, trying to run something, versus just random basketball. I've got to do a better job there. Watch film, see where I can get better. But yeah, that's on me." As Haliburton mentioned, the Thunder helped their defense with their offense. Gilgeous-Alexander seemed exhausted for much of the game with the full-court pressure he was dealing with but Oklahoma City relieved some of that by using forward Jalen Williams to take the ball up and giving Gilgeous-Alexander a bit of a breather. That helped him close strong as he scored 15 points in the fourth quarter on 3 of 6 shooting to finish with 35 points. The NBA's foremost expert in drawing fouls was 10 of 10 at the line in the game, including 8 of 8 in the fourth quarter and he drew two key fouls on forward Aaron Nesmith to get him fouled out with 44 seconds left. The Thunder had a miserable 3-point shooting night, making just 3 of 16 attempts, but Gilgeous-Alexander's 3 with 2:58 to go cut a four-point lead to one and helped turn the tide. "I just tried to be aggressive," Gilgeous-Alexander said. "Like you said, I knew what it would have looked like if we lost tonight. I didn't want to go out not swinging. I didn't want to go out not doing everything I could do in my power, in my control to try to win the game. The guys deserve that as much from me. The coaching staff deserves that much from me." For as poorly as they shot the ball, the Pacers still had an opportunity in the game's final minute thanks, in large part, to hustle plays. They took a four-point lead with 3:52 left because Nesmith rebounded a blocked shot by Haliburton and drew a foul from Dort and hit two free throws. The Pacers were down four with 24 seconds to go when Bennedict Mathurin chased down a rebound on a missed 3-pointer by Myles Turner and drew a loose-ball foul from Holmgren. However, Mathurin missed both free throws. The Thunder called timeout after grabbing the rebound and Mathurin was called for an away-from-the-play foul that give Oklahoma City a free throw and possession of the ball. Gilgeous-Alexander hit the free throw and Mathurin managed to complete a steal off a deflection by Haliburton and draw another foul at the rim, but this time he missed the first free throw before hitting the second. Mathurin was then called for another away-from-the-play foul and the Thunder scored the game's last seven points without needing a field goal. The Pacers collapse will certainly sting for the next two days and could for eternity if they don't find a way to win the series. They held a 3-1 lead in each of the previous three series in the playoffs and there's no way to get that back. However, they've also defied much longer odds in these playoffs than what come with a series tied 2-2 with two games left on the road and they've rallied back from bad performances, too. They'll certainly be underdogs on Monday, but they have yet to lose consecutive games in the playoffs. "I don't need to motivate these guys," Carlisle said. "I think they have a sense of where they are. But this kind of a challenge is going to have extreme highs and extreme lows. This is a low right now, and we're going to have to bounce back from it."
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
New Video of Pascal Siakam Emerges Before Game 2 of NBA Finals
New Video of Pascal Siakam Emerges Before Game 2 of NBA Finals originally appeared on Athlon Sports. The Indiana Pacers will play the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 2 of the NBA Finals on Sunday at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City. Advertisement Indiana holds a 1-0 series lead following a close 111-110 victory on Thursday. Forward Pascal Siakam played well against the Thunder's tough defense, posting a double-double with 19 points and 10 rebounds. The 31-year-old has averaged 20.9 points and 6.0 rebounds per game throughout this postseason. He was awarded the Larry Bird Trophy as the Eastern Conference finals MVP for averaging 24.8 points per game against the New York Knicks. The thing is, Siakam isn't just talented on the basketball court; he also has some solid looking soccer skills. The NBA posted a new video to its X account on Saturday of the All-Star forward having fun during practice by kicking a basketball around like a soccer ball. Indiana Pacers forward Pascal Siakam (43) speaking after receiving the Larry Bird Trophy as Eastern Conference finals MVP.© Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images 'More of P's soccer skills on display today,' the league wrote in the post's caption. Advertisement They also shared a similar video from before Thursday's game, in which he is seen doing the same thing. 'P always brings the skills,' the NBA shared. 'Now he's bringing them back to the finals 🔥.' Siakam, a native of Cameroon, isn't the only NBA All-Star who likes to show off his soccer skills. Multiple videos of Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncic kicking around a basketball have been posted to show his love of the sport. Siakam and the Pacers play the Thunder in Game 2 of the NBA Finals at 8 p.m. ET on Sunday on ABC. Related: Robert Griffin III Delivers Verdict on Tyrese Haliburton's 'Overrated' Tag After Game-Winner This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 7, 2025, where it first appeared.
Associated Press
6 hours ago
- Associated Press
Howard leads Atlanta against Washington after 36-point performance
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