‘”You can expect that from Carolina,” said Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff. “We had them down but we counted on them coming out hard [in the second period]. First 10 minutes of the second period, they took it to us really well, and they had us on the ropes a little bit. I fully expected this to be a tough one, and although we had a tremendous jump in the first period, you just had the sense that they were going to come back and you weren’t going to be able to hold them off.”‘