"Win the ones you should win"

"Win the damn games you're supposed to win. Otherwise, what the hell is the point of trotting your sorry asses out there?" Robbie Ftorek screamed at his team in the lockerroom, punctuating the scream with a slammed door. "I swear, you lose this game, I'll make arrangements to start trading people!"

Squaring up to host one of the worst teams in the conference, the Boston Bruins had been palling and joking around as the waited for their cue to take the ice. Evidently, Ftorek thought they were doing too much of it.

Ftorek was correct - the defense came out sloppy in the first half of the opening period, allowing thirteen shots by the Sabres to only nine for the Bruins. But while the offense was tepid, eventually it would come through.

At 12:27, Sean Brown intercepted a Jason Spezza cross-ice pass, taking it up the rink past the center line. There, he skidded the puck in a sloppy attempt to feed Jochan Hecht, who made the best use of it he could. While it may have been ugly, Hecht skated right, then wrapped around the net where Rick DiPietro had fallen in an attempt to block the shot, and Hecht flipped it over the sprawled Sabre netminder, giving him twenty-four on the year.

Three and a half minutes later, Andy McDonald scored for the eighteenth time this season on a Keith Tkachuk-Richard Jackman pass to give the Bruins a 2-0 lead. The period was capped off with a Richard Jackman goal with a minute to play, making the margin at the period break 3-0.

The second period also opened quietly as the Sabres played stall tactics with the puck. Following a Sean Brown elbowing penalty, the Sabres power play found the back of the net when Andrei Zyuzin beat Andrew Raycroft to make the game 3-1. The margin would not maintain, though, as once again, DiPietro's focus faded in the end of the period. This time, Bill Guerin and Jochan Hecht were credited with assists when Sean Brown put his sixth of the season past the former top pick. The period ended with both teams taking six shots on goal, but with the Bruins up 4-1.

The final period of the game was even more boring then the other two. While highlighted by a Maxim Afinogenov and Sean Brown fight (ruled a draw by those scoring at home), Andrei Zyuzin again beat Raycroft, and once again, did so on the power play, this time at 15:37 after Richard Jackman was whistled for roughing.

That was the way the game would end - 4-2 and with Andrew Raycroft staking the win to improve to 22-16-3. Fourteen thousand, eight hundred thirty-seven were in attendance for the match-up. Otherwise notable was Richard Jackman's continued march for the Kruncher's Award of the Year for the Bruins, as he was penalized for six minutes, closing him in on the necessary two hundred for the year.