Boston Gets Back to Bruins Basics

The last couple of games the Boston Bruins stepped away from their identity a bit and failed to show up for the full game, and as a result they found themselves on the losing end of their tilts with the Philadelphia Flyers on Monday and the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday. In fact they were blanked on Tuesday, and an unfortunate incident early in that game resulted in their goaltender Tuukka Rask ending up on the injured reserve list.

In addition to their not playing to their strengths, there were some comments that they had not responded appropriately after Rask got hurt. However, while that wasn’t quite true—a couple of the players did try to get Emil Bemstrom to answer the bell, but the 20-year-old Swedish rookie elected not to—they had toned down a bit of their physicality.

While many fans believe that the Bruins are being “man-handled” by the other teams and should have an enforcer, the reality is that there were a few more issues in the overall play of the Bruins, some of which may simply not have been as apparent.

Regardless, the Bruins take great pride in wearing the Bruins sweater. And not surprisingly things were discussed among the team on Thursday morning that showed in their play Thursday night as they took on the Pittsburgh Penguins. For the Bruins it was the third game in four nights, but it was the best of the three games.

Despite Sidney Crosby putting the Penguins on the scoreboard just 24 seconds into the game, the Bruins managed to limit Crosby to that one shot through the first two periods. He put two more shots on Halak during the third.

With Rask out of the picture as he grapples with his concussion, Jaroslav Halak took to the pipes tonight for the Bruins, while Dan Vladar was recalled from the Providence Bruins to serve as backup. Additionally, the Bruins had announced the placing of Brett Ritchie on waivers for the purposes of sending him to Providence and had recalled Karson Kuhlman.

Sean Kuraly knotted the score at 10:03 of the opening period, assisted by Kuhlman and Charlie McAvoy.  And then at 12:16 of the first Par Lindholm deflected a shot from Kuhlman, giving Kuhlman two assists on the game before the first period was even over.

The second period didn’t see any scoring, but it did see an increase in feistiness between the teams. Patric Hornqvist tried to stir things up with Kuraly as the period was winding down—there had been a couple of other exchanges between the two of them earlier—and then when Kuraly didn’t bite, Hornqvist gave Matt Grzelcyk a crosscheck as he was skating to the bench. Torey Krug decided that enough was enough and the two went off with matching roughing minors at 16:05. Apparently the two minutes in the sin bin did nothing to cool their tempers and as they got back on the ice, the went at each other. They were each whistled for fighting majors at 18:11.

For both teams the goaltenders were stars. Tristan Jarry made some key stops on the Bruins throughout the game. Meanwhile, when McAvoy misplayed the puck toward the end of the second period and Pittsburgh’s Zach Aston-Reese and Bryan Rust found themselves with a 2-on-0 opportunity, it was Halak who came up big to deny Rust and keep the Bruins in the lead as they exited the ice for the second intermission.

Patrice Bergeron gave the Bruins some breathing room at 3:19 in the third, as David Pastrnak put a no-look, cross-ice pass right on his stick when Bergeron flew into the offensive zone and fired a laser from the top of the right circle. For Bergeron it was his 20th goal of the season while Pastrnak notched his 31st assist.

Pastrnak garnered his second assist when he shot the puck to Brad Marchand—who did have a couple of struggles on the ice during the game—who gave Boston their fourth goal of the game, scoring on the empty net at 19:07 of the third.

The teams will be right back at it, this time in Pittsburgh, when they play their third game this season back in Philadelphia on Sunday.