Scoring has been quite the problem for the Boston Bruins as of late. In their last 12 periods of hockey, they have scored a measly five goals.

Tuesday night was no different against the lowly Buffalo Sabres. After dominating the first period of play and jumping out to an early 1-0 lead on Loui Eriksson’s 18th goal of the season, the Black and Gold were stonewalled by Anders Lindback en route to the 2-1 shootout loss.

Buffalo tied the score early in the third period on the power-play due to Carl Soderberg’s holding penalty with three seconds left in the second period. It was Rasmus Ristolainen’s fifth goal of the season.

The B’s held the last place Sabres to three shots in the first period and 24 total shots for the game compared to their 45 shots thrown on Lindback.

Every facet of the game was nearly dominated by the Black and Gold, but they just couldn’t build a lead and capitalize on their opportunities. They let the Sabres hang around and it came back to bite them on a night where the Ottawa Senators defeated the Carolina Hurricanes in overtime.

“As the game goes on, you’ve got full control, you’ve got a one-nothing lead and you just can’t seem to get that second goal,” Claude Julien said with a look of frustration on his face after the loss. “Those are dangerous situations to be in when a team hangs around that long and eventually they’re going to get a break somewhere and they did. They finally tied the game up and as much as we tried we just couldn’t muster up a second goal. That’s our own fault.”

The TD Garden knew how many scoring chances the B’s had Tuesday. But their lack of finish, combined with Lindback’s performance, proved to be a bad combination.

“We had chances, we had shots and if we’re not going to find ways to bury goals then you’ve got to look at yourselves in those kinds of situations,” Julien said.

The Chris Kelly-Carl Soderberg-Loui Eriksson trio was the best line on the ice Tuesday night, but had one goal on 14 shots to show for it. After the first period, Eriksson was out-shooting the Sabres by himself at a 4-3 margin.

“Like I said, we need to find ways to score those goals and we’re maybe too slow to put it in and giving too much time for the goalie to come back and make the save,” Eriksson said. “I thought we did a pretty good job to get shots on net today. We just need to find more ways to score more goals.”

Eriksson’s linemate, Soderberg, hasn’t scored a goal in over a month and knows exactly what the entire B’s team was feeling on Tuesday night.

Soderberg admits the result was due to the fact that they let Buffalo hang around.

“I guess,” said Soderberg, who hasn’t scored a goal in 24 games. “I think we played two good periods, but we got to bury some of those chances. So we wanted to have more than one after two periods for sure.”

From face-offs won, to zone-time, to scoring chances, the Black and Gold dominated the Sabres from end to end.

At times, however, Julien’s team has gone through stretches where they have problems lighting the lamp. That was again evident on Tuesday night.

“Yeah, we’ve told ourselves that we needed to find a way to get that second goal or even third one,” Patrice Bergeron said. “We needed to, kind of, find a way to give ourselves a cushion and we didn’t do that and it’s pretty easy when you don’t have that killer instinct for other teams to get back. It’s just one shot away and that’s what they did. We definitely had most of the play, but that being said, it’s about results.”

“We have seen some of their scorers lately against other top teams in the league and they have been tight games and they have played us tight this year,” added defenseman Adam McQuaid, who tallied his first point since January 15th after an assist on Eriksson’s first period goal.

“Again when you have the offensive zone time like we did, you obviously want to try and come out with a little more of an advantage than we had just getting that one goal. “I mean again, their goalie played well, you can’t take that away from him. I don’t know. Searching for goals right now.”

The Bruins will need to have a short-term memory and focus on creating opportunities to score goals because Thursday night they again travel to Ottawa to face off against the Senators. The Sens, who have a game in hand on the B’s, trail by four points for the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference.