This is why the Bruins are never good

After beating the Buffalo Sabres the first three times they met this season, you had to know that streak would end at some point.

Sabres forward Drew Stafford scored a hat trick last night at the HSBC Center as Buffalo (13-14-4) beat Boston (16-9-4) 3-2.

The frustrating part of the game (and the reason for the headline) was that the Bruins choked away two leads (1-0 and 2-1) and completely turtled when it mattered, stop me if you've heard that before with this team.

They had a goal by Brad Marchand (correctly) called back in the third period on which Shawn Thornton received a penalty for goaltender interference. Worse than that, Milan Lucic was called for a unsportsmanlike penalty late in the third period when the Bruins were scrambling for the tying goal. I don't know which is more sad, that the ref called it on Lucic for saying he was "a joke" while he was sitting on the bench or the fact that the Bruins' robot head coach Claude Julien didn't go crazy on that Bantam League call.

David Krejci opened the scoring at 17:29 in the first period when he tipped in a shot from Dennis Seidenberg. In what turned out to be a pattern, the Sabres quickly responded. Stafford followed up Derek Roy's shot off the post and got a power-play goal at 18:41. Tyler Myers also assisted.

Michael Ryder gave the Bs a 2-1 advantage with a pretty individual effort at 6:21 in the third period on the power-play.

Just 32 seconds later, Stafford scored his second on a one-timer from the slot. Roy assisted on that one too.

Next, Stafford had another power-play goal at 10:55 after a feed from Roy and Jason Pominville.

Boston goaltender Tuukka Rask had 32 saves while his Buffalo counterpart Ryan Miller also had 32 saves.

Tim Thomas should be in net tonight as the Bruins travel to Montreal. The Canadiens have lost three in a row so Boston needs to get two points to wipe away the bitter taste from last night's fiasco.