After Thursday’s loss to the Canadiens, the Bruins talked a lot about correcting their defensive mistakes and getting back to basics in their own zone. The Bruins were not happy with their breakdowns in the defensive zone and knew they needed to correct those issues as it was a key factor in their loss to Montreal.

Well, it didn’t take too long for the Bruins to correct those mistakes.

48 hours later the Bruins put forth their best effort—offensively and defensively—in a 4-0 win over the Buffalo Sabres at First Niagara Center.

The Bruins blueline powered the Black and Gold to their third win of the season, scoring the Bruins first three goals of the night on tallies by Dougie Hamilton, Zdeno Chara and Torey Krug.

Defensively the Bruins couldn’t have rebounded from Thursday in a better way. They clogged the middle and made sure no man was left uncovered in a dangerous scoring area. This type of defensive effort was exactly what head coach Claude Julien was looking for as the Bruins concluded their road trip with a 2-1 record.

“And last game we talked about our breakdowns defensively and tonight was much better. You know I think we protected the slot area much better and I mean they got some shots from the inside but most of it was coming from the outside” said Julien.

“We were a lot better defensively and I think it made a big difference and it gives you an opportunity to go home feeling much better about yourself as a team and knowing you got four out of six points and knowing our game is starting to come around.”

Saturday’s four goal outburst gives the Bruins eight goals in two games. The team had six total heading into Thursday’s contest. All three goals scored by the Bruins defense came from shots from the points. Getting pucks to the net from all over the ice is something the Bruins have been working on lately. For Chara, it was nice to see the team finally rewarded with shots from the point.

“Yeah It’s something that you don’t see very often [goals from the point], but again when you have good traffic and guys are driving to the net and staying in front of the net, it makes it hard on the goalies to see the puck and creates a lot of good things offensively and I think that’s how we scored those three goals” Chara said after notching his second goal of the season.

It’s been an up and down start to the season for Dougie Hamilton. Entering the game pointless, Hamilton scored the games’ first goal and assisted on Chara’s first period goal, shortly after he opened the scoring 9:56 into the first.

“I think it’s the credit to the forwards for being in front, those shots don’t go in if they’re not there. On mine, maybe Torey’s and Z’s they are pretty hard so I think it’s just that we were focusing on getting guys in front and pucks to the net so it’s nice to be rewarded from that” stated Hamilton.

After dropping the gloves with Sabres winger Nicolas Deslauriers, defenseman Kevan Miller failed to return to the game, leaving the Bruins with just five defensemen for the majority of the game. Fortunately, but unfortunately, this is a familiar situation for the Black and Gold.

“Well, you know that you’ll be playing a lot, I don’t know if you change your game, a little bit maybe, you just got to pace yourself a little bit, obviously tough when you see someone go out and you feel for them, but everyone can play and everyone just rolled through and we played well, just nice to be able to do that” added Hamilton.

It seemed as if Miller hurt his shoulder after hitting the ice, Julien deemed it an “upper-body injury” but couldn’t give an exact diagnosis.

“I don’t know, I haven’t even talked to the trainers. Obviously you’re going to hear the upper-body injury and it happened during the fight. So I think when he fell he hurt himself and he came off with pain.”

After stopping all 16 Sabres shots in the first period, Bruins’ goalie Niklas Svedberg saw his defense completely shut down the opponent, limiting Buffalo to sixteen shots between the second and third periods. The lack of second and third period shots for Buffalo was due to the Bruins keeping pucks to the outside, not giving the Sabres anything to work with and being the first ones on any loose rebounds that were left sitting untouched.

The shutout was Svedberg’s first of his career and second career NHL victory.

“Great feeling you know” said Svedberg about the shutout. “Most of all to get the win for us was huge today and of course to get a shutout here, too” said Svedberg.

Hear what the Bruins had to say following Saturday’s win in Buffalo: