At 6:59 of the third period, David Krejci scored his 10th of the year to give the Bruins a 3-1 lead over the Sabres. With the way the Black and Gold were playing up to that point, it seemed like an Atlantic Division lead was in sight as the 17,565 in attendance at TD Garden started to do ‘the wave’ in an early celebration.

By the end of the night, the Bruins ‘waved’ the two-goal lead and first place in the Atlantic goodbye.

Starting with Ryan O’Reilly’s first of two gaols at 10:21 of the third, the Sabres scored five unanswered as they took advantage of the Black and Gold relaxing with a two-goal lead. Former Boston University Terrier Jack Eichel added two goals of his own — including the tying goal just 39 seconds after O’Reilly’s first and Jamie McGinn netted the game-winner at 14:24 of the third to give the Sabres the come from behind 6-3 victory.

Afterwards, a visibly upset Claude Julien took two questions from the media during his postgame press conference.

“That was our team not respecting I guess the game of hockey,” said the Bruins coach, whose presser lasted less than 90 seconds in length. “When you take a lead like that and you make some of those plays that we made, you’ve got yourselves to blame.”

Whether it was Jonas Gustavsson allowing soft goals on the short side post or the icings that led to a couple of the Sabres tallies or just the game getting away from them in general, the Bruins are the only one’s responsible for allowing things to snowball.

For the second straight game, they also failed to jump up in the standings.

“I think we’ve just got to focus on the way we played in the third period over getting first halfway through the season,” said forward Matt Beleskey, who notched his fifth goal of the season at 5:49 of the second period to tie the game at 1-1. “So, that’s something on our minds, but we’ve got to figure out how to play with a lead and close out games like that.”

Here are some other things that we learned from Saturday night.

Quick turnaround gives Bruins little time to dwell

Bruins fans will find it difficult to find any silver lining to Saturday’s debacle. The only thing that the Black and Gold can do is look forward to another divisional matchup with the Senators in Ottawa in less than 24 hours.

“It’s not going to get any easier tomorrow,” said Patrice Bergeron, who gave the Bruins a 2-1 lead at 7:05 of the second. “You know, they’re a great team and it’s going to be a tough game so we definitely have to get back on track and back to playing the way we want to play for the whole game.”

“With a game tomorrow we definitely have to park this and learn from it, but get ready for tomorrow,” Brad Marchand added about Sunday’s matchup with the Senators. “We can’t dwell on this and drag the energy into tomorrow. We have to make sure that we park it and just get prepared to play a better game tomorrow.”

With the Red Wings beating the Predators in Nashville, Detroit now takes over first place in the Atlantic. The Bruins, who have a game in hand, fell to third place and trail their Original Six foes by one point.

Krug leaves game

At the time, no one in the media noticed what led to Torey Krug’s injury that took place in the first period. Thanks to Stanley Cup of Chowder, we have a better idea on the potential severity.

Krug pulled up awkwardly following a battle for a loose puck in an apparent non-contact injury. He would leave the game and would not return leaving the Black and Gold with five defensemen the rest of the way.

Julien was not asked for an update on Krug — although he probably wouldn’t have under tonight’s circumstances. My guess is we’ll have an update when he talks to the media before tomorrow’s game in Ottawa.