BUFFALO – For the next two weeks or so, the lasting friendships Boston Bruins winger Casey Mittelstadt made over his six years here are on hold.
Mittelstadt, 27, said he loved his time with the Sabres and is happy they ended their NHL-record 14-year drought and cracked the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
“But I’m on the other side of it now,” he said prior to Sunday’s 4-3 loss to the Sabres in Game 1 of their first-round series. “So definitely not cheering for them this series.”
Mittelstadt, the eighth overall pick by the Sabres in 2017, has possibly found a home in Boston after playing for three teams over a one-year stretch.
After the Sabres traded him to the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for defenseman Bowen Byram on March 6, 2024, the Avalanche dealt him to Bruins a year and day later.
In Boston, Mittelstadt has developed strong chemistry playing alongside center Pavel Zacha and Viktor Arvidsson on the Bruins’ second line nearly all season.
Mittelstadt scored 15 goals and 42 points in 71 regular-season games. More importantly, he registered a career-high plus-12 rating. Last season, he compiled a dreadful minus-29 rating between the Bruins and Avalanche.
“I think we complement each other well,” Mittelstadt said in KeyBank Center. “Obviously, I think Pavs plays a heck of a 200-foot game. Arvi’s a little motor, getting in everywhere in on the forecheck, to the net. I think I do pretty solid along the wall. I think the fit has been good.”
Following what first-year Bruins coach Marco Sturm called “a tough start,” he said Mittelstadt “really took off, that line took off.”
“A new place, a new system trying to get comfortable,” Mittelstadt said. “I think that’s one of my struggles, it takes me a second to get comfortable. But from there I think it’s been good.”
By now, the novelty of playing in Buffalo as an opponent has worn off for Mittelstadt. It no longer feels weird.
“You come back right away, you don’t even feel like you’ve left to some degree,” he said. “But now I’ve moved on, and obviously, like I said, a lot of good friends, people who will be friends for my whole life.”
In the Bruins’ last regular-season visit March 26, Mittelstadt beat one of his closest friends and former roommate, Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin to a puck in front of the net and tied the game. The Bruins won 4-3 in overtime.
“We had pretty good banter during the game, to be honest,” Mittelstadt said. “That one felt pretty good, obviously, on Ras. But, I mean, a lot of years going at it with him, a lot of ridiculous arguments. So that one was fun, for sure.”
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On Sunday, the Sabres, who boast some of the league’s best depth, scratched three healthy defensemen and two forwards.
Coach Lindy Ruff had options to construct Sunday’s lineup, so 6-foot-4 center Josh Dunne and 6-foot-3 defenseman Conor Timmins played against the Bruins.
“I think we’ve already seen there’s injuries in yesterday’s games,” Ruff said Sunday morning. “You need depth. I think depth got us to where we got to in the regular season. The three goalies we needed. The amount of defense we needed with guys in and out.
“You look at the group of forwards, we lost guys early in the year from (Jiri) Kulich to (Justin) Danforth. Those are a couple of names that some people have already forgot about that missed a good period of time.”
The Sabres had five healthy scratches: defensemen Michael Kesselring, Zach Metsa and Luke Schenn and forwards Tyson Kozak and Tanner Pearson.
The also scratched goalie Colten Ellis (undisclosed injury), center Sam Carrick (left arm) and forward Noah Ostlund (upper body).
Ostlund started practicing Saturday.
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Sturm, who on Friday told reporters in Boston his Bruins “are bigger, stronger” and “more physical” than the Sabres, said on Sunday he’s glad his quote had legs.
“Somebody had fun with it, so I’m glad that happened,” he said. “But, no, at the end day, no one’s looking closely enough like I do. I watched the last four games when we played. It was very plain to see when we were on the top of our game and we were hard on puck, strong on pucks, were physical, we have a chance. And if we … decide to play their way, might as well stay at home, because they’re that good.”
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Lindy Ruff, a hard-nosed scrapper who had some memorable postseason battles with Boston in his playing days, said “the game is in a lot better place now.”
In the 1980s, he said he sometimes “had a hard time sleeping during the day when you knew that night was going to be one of those nights you feared for your life sometimes.”
“The game is different,” he said. “Intimidation was a huge part of the game back then. Fighting was a big part of the game. Every team probably had four or five guys that could take care of anybody, and those series we had with the Bruins were examples of it. …
“We’ve had a couple games this year where there’s been quite a number of fights inside the game. I think playoffs is the time when you can expect out of the normal. There could be some of that.”
Ruff joked that “when you live through the game, it was fun.”