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Brad Marchand leads way, sinks Flyers in OT |
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Ty Anderson
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The Boston Bruins, though they control their own playoff destiny, are in desperation mode.
One of the league’s unluckier clubs throughout the year, the Bruins -- entering today’s action with three different teams within five points of their spot for the East’s second wild card -- need points. Or perhaps better yet, the bounces that have eluded them for over well 60 games this season.
It didn’t look it’d come on a Saturday afternoon affair at TD Garden against the Philadelphia Flyers, though, as the Flyers’ go-ahead goal with just 4:30 to play in the third appeared to go off an airborne Chris VandeVelde before trickling through Boston netminder Tuukka Rask.
But a late-game power play opportunity gave the Bruins another chance at turning their luck around by way of a 6-on-4 advantage, and did just that by way of Brad Marchand’s tip-in with 14.1 seconds left in the third. And it was Marchand that nabbed the Bruins the extra point with an overtime strike, his 20th of the season, pushing the B’s lead over the Flyers for the wild card to five points.
“I look back at the Vancouver game now. We lost 2-1, and we’re by far the better team,” Claude Julien said of a Boston win that gives the B’s wins in 19 of 34 at the Garden. “Against Calgary the other night we were the more dominant team and we should have come up there with two points and you feel you had a lot of chances you didn’t bury so we said eventually you hope that a little break will come your way and tonight it seemed like it did. Hopefully it’s a sign of good things to come.”
Boston began the game with a familiar tune, scoring the first goal of the game for the seventh straight contest, as Zdeno Chara’s power-play wrister beat Mason just 7:07 into the first. The goal was Chara’s second power-play strike in the last three games, and has come from a familiar spot, as the 37-year-old has slid back to the point of Boston’s second man-advantage unit.
“He’s getting his shots through and you know, again, sometimes it’s not always the big slap shot but just making sure that you get shots to the net,” said Julien. “I know he works hard in practice. He goes out there early and takes a ton of shots all the time, and it’s nice to see him get rewarded for that.”
The resilient Flyers countered with a power-play goal of their own in the middle frame, with Jakub Voracek absolutely sniping one up high on Rask at the 9:43 mark, his 20th of the season.
And as the teams traded punch for punch throughout a tied second and third period, the Garden sat in nervous anticipation. These Bruins, counted out so many times, were in the closest thing they could compare to a playoff atmosphere. And somehow, someway, they pulled a victory out of thin air.
The famed bounces turned, and were put on the back of Brad Marchand -- a sometimes questioned piece of this team’s core -- at the most critical moment of a frustrating season for everybody in the Hub.
“It’s crazy in this game how if you miss a breakaway or even a penalty shot, those things can get in your head and you have to realize that you have to let it go. If you feed off that you can start to force plays,” Marchand said after the game. “We found we were throwing pucks away for no reason, just because we weren’t confident enough to hold onto it until there was a play to be made. Now it just seems like we have the confidence where when there’s not a play we’ll make something, create something, hold onto it until someone is there to support us. That’s all mental toughness and in this game you got to be mentally tough and be able to battle through those things.”
Letting go of the negatives and could-have-beens has been an obvious for Marchand, the subject of various offseason trade rumors and scapegoat attempts, in 2014-15, as today put him at 20 goals for the year, giving him at least 20 goals in every full season during his tenure as a Bruin. (He even put up an impressive 18 tallies in the Bruins’ 2013 lockout-delayed 48-game season.) And a year after questioning his own preparation for the 2013-14 season, Marchand has felt the positives of his changes.
“I saw a sports psychiatrist a lot this summer and I just trained different a little bit,” Marchand admitted when asked about his offseason changes. “More working on my recovery and my cardio and stuff like that. I continued to do that throughout the season and it’s definitely paid off.”
With the victory, the Bruins improved to 32-22-10 on the year, and have swept the season series with the Flyers for the second year in a row, the first time they’ve accomplished that since 1970 to 1972.
Random thoughts and notes
- This was as close to a playoff game as it could get for the Flyers. Strike that, it was a playoff game.
Entering play four points behind Boston for the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference, and with just 17 games to go (while the Bruins have two games in hand), Philly knew that a loss of any sort would set them back five or six points and by all means close the books on their year.
The Bruins had few answers for a smashmouth fourth-line featuring Chris VandeVelde, Zac Rinaldo, and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, and Adam McQuaid, successfully goaded into a penalty by Rinaldo, was a clear target from Philadelphia forecheckers. And there were numerous times where the Giroux line took advantage of a matchup with a youthful Spooner line in the B’s end, and controlled the pace of play and stifled Boston’s ability to break out.
But the Black and Gold knew that they’d be absorbing the Flyers’ best punch.
“Every team is going to give us a big challenge, a big game. I mean like I said before the game, it doesn’t matter who we play, every team we are going to play for the rest of the season is going to give us their best fight and we have to play the same way,” Boston captain Zdeno Chara said after the win. “We have teams that are either really close behind us or teams right ahead of us that will be fighting for better positions or every point basically. So it’s a playoff mode, playoff hockey.”
- It’s a tale of two post-60-minute clubs. Today was Boston’s 20th overtime game this year. And with the win, the Bruins improved to 8-3 in games settled via the five-minute, four-on-four overtime frame. On the flip-side, they’re just 2-7 in games decided via the shootout. Luckily for the B’s, if they get there, shootouts are a thing of the past once that Stanley Cup Playoffs decal is put below the blue line.
- Lost in the craziness that was this game’s finish? The 31-year-old Max Talbot, skating in just his second game with the Bruins, recorded the primary assist on Marchand’s overtime goal, and even received a kiss to the visor from a jubilated No. 63. His first point (and kiss) in a Bruins uniform.
“He’s got a great personality that I think is going to keep that line excited, and you know, again, playing with a lot of intensity. He’s got some experience,” Julien said of Talbot. “He’s a former captain back in the day, and he’s been a great leader, so I think he’s a guy that understands the game. He understands his role. He knows he’s not the 50 goal scorer but he’ll certainly go out there and he’ll create them. As you could see today, he creates chances and can have some of his opportunities as well.”
Talbot finished today’s game with an assist, one shot, and one hit in 12:08 of time on ice.
- Are the Philadelphia Flyers dead?
Head coach Craig Berube wouldn’t say that. Nobody in the Flyers’ locker room would say that. And though the light is dimming on the 2015 Flyers, Voracek’s trying to keep his head clear while the club looks for a rebound win against New Jersey tomorrow.
“Yeah, just don’t read Twitter,” Voracek said.
- Something you may have noticed today: the Boston Bruins wore their road whites for a home game. Now, they've done this a few times before, so it's not exactly groundbreaking news. But every time they do, the same debate sparks up: Should teams wear white at home?
This is honestly one of those subjects that I have an unnecessarily hard stance on. My answer? No, no, no (read this as the complete opposite of a chant at Nassau Coliseum). The home team should always wear their colorful uniforms. Here's my reasoning: When there's playoff hockey in Philly, I absolutely love the Orange Crush the crowd has. It makes their jerseys pop so much more, and it gives a great look to the crowd. I loved this when Nashville did it, too. Replace that with white, and you have one of those boring, overdone whiteouts. No thanks.
(Other hard hockey opinions include but are not limited to-- Shootouts are not as bad as everybody thinks, Erik Karlsson deserved the 2012 Norris Trophy, Joe Thornton deserves better treatment from like, everybody in hockey, Sean Avery was good for hockey, and that the 2011 Vancouver Canucks are probably the most talented team to never win a Stanley Cup.)
Up next
The Bruins are back at it tomorrow afternoon as they play host to the Detroit Red Wings for a 12:30 p.m. start time. The Bruins have taken two of three against the Wings this season, but enter Sunday’s game with a 3-6-2 mark in the second leg of back-to-back sets. Jonas Gustavsson will get the start for a Detroit squad that comes to Boston with points in all but 10 of their 32 road games this year.
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