Marco Sturm taunts the Buffalo Sabres ahead of Game 1.

The Boston Bruins appear to be supremely confident heading into their opening round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Buffalo Sabres, at least you would think so based on some of the highly charged comments coming from Bruins head coach Marco Sturm.

Sturm spoke with members of the media ahead of Game 1 and expressed great confidence about the areas in which he felt his team had an edge over the Sabres. Sturm pointed to the level of physicality from the Bruins, implying that he doesn't believe the Sabres can hope to match that.

"We know how we have to play, we are gonna be ready to go, we're excited," said Sturm. "We are bigger, stronger, we are more physical."

Now you might not immediately read that as trash talk, and that's fine if you don't think so, but Sturm also made comments about the Sabres head coach. Sturm was downright critical of Lindy Ruff as a head coach, suggesting that he didn't do a good enough job as a coach throughout his career in the National Hockey League.

"In the past Lindy was not really a big matchup guy," said Sturm. "He did his thing so we'll see where it goes, maybe he does it different in the playoffs. But we don't really care."

These comments from Sturm will no doubt put a ton of pressure on his own players to perform big in Game 1, all the while giving the Buffalo Sabres plenty of bulletin board material to light a fire under their players and even their head coach. Whether or not Sturm's comments will be proven correct or come back to haunt him remains to be seen.