After missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season, the Boston Bruins made it in 2025-26 under first-year coach Marco Sturm. Just qualifying for the playoffs is a feat within itself for this Bruins team. Nobody saw this coming, not even the optimist Black and Gold fan saw it coming.
Boston finished the season with 100 points in the standings, which was good enough to secure the first Eastern Conference wild-card spot, one point ahead of the Ottawa Senators. That matches Boston with the Buffalo Sabres, the NHL's feel-good story of the season.
Not only is NHL playoff hockey back in Western New York, but this Sabres team is scary good. They have all the pieces to make a deep run in the playoffs. It wouldn't surprise anyone if that ended up being the case. Game 1 will be on Sunday night at the KeyBank Center.
Going into the series, the Sabres are the favorite, and really, who would disagree with that? However, the Bruins' system could cause some problems for Buffalo. Will it cause enough problems that they can pull off the upset? ESPN doesn't think so.
ESPN sends Bruins bad message on Sabres first-round playoff series
The playoffs get underway with three series beginning on Saturday. ESPN dropped their series predictions ahead of the first game, and their picks for the Black and Gold were pretty alarming. Out of the 25 ESPN experts has logged their predictions for the opening round, 18 out of the 25 picked Buffalo to come out on top.
To make it easier, the seven ESPN personalities who picked Boston were Sean Allen, Megan Chayka, Erik Johnson, Peter Lawrence-Liddell, Vince Masi, Victoria Matiash, and AJ Mleczko.
This isn't surprising, and if we're being honest, Boston is playing with house money in the series. Some young players are going to get some valuable playoff experience, and this is a major first step for an organization that decided to go through a retool rather than a rebuild. Games are played on the ice, but to nobody's surprise, Buffalo enters as a big favorite.
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