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Soderberg, Bruins answer Oil in third for 5-2 win

November 7, 2014, 12:07 AM ET [43 Comments]
Ty Anderson
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Boston Bruins damn near lost their minds when they felt victimized by two premature whistles.

The first came in the second period, when Ben Scrivens sealed the deal on the puck in the eyes of the referee just before Seth Griffith poked the puck home. The second came midway through the third, with the Bruins trailing 2-1 to the Edmonton Oilers, when David Krejci’s bid for the equalizer was whistled dead as Scrivens fell on (and not shortly after, lost) the puck in his crease.

But rather than dwell on what could have been in the attacking zone in the ultimate loser’s lament, a Boston club that entered tonight’s contest riding a three-game winning streak (their longest of the season) dug in.

“We should have two goals there,” B’s center Carl Soderberg said of the no-go calls against the club. “But we worked hard and sooner or later you know you’re going to get one.”

Get one? Try three. Beginning with Loui Eriksson’s goal 11:04 into the third, his third goal of the season, the Bruins scored three goals in just 2:34 en route to a big 5-2 win over the Oilers. Then the towering Keith Aulie’s Oiler debut made its first tangible appearance by way of his holding the stick penalty, putting the Bruins on the man advantage just 54 seconds after Eriksson’s game-tying marker.

That’s when Soderberg struck off an absolutely brilliant feed from a tripping Patrice Bergeron, putting the Bruins up by one and giving the club another power play opportunity.

“It’s a bad decision, one that cost us, and then it actually led to the next one as well. That’s a hard one to frame. It goes to the mindset that every moment is critical,” Edmonton coach Dallas Eakins said of the penalties. “You’re in control of the game, everything is fine. Even when they scored the second one, I still felt we were in control. But our penalty kill there on the third one, with the big mistake, killed us.”

Killed them, it did, too, with Dougie Hamilton (though the goal was originally credited to Soderberg) blasting one through Scrivens on the Bruins’ fourth power play of the night.

It wasn’t a win that the Bruins deserved by any means, especially given the way the Oilers took it to them in the second period (and even the third for that matter), but one the club will most certainly take.

“[The Oilers] really came out skating in that second period. They really got their legs going and we seemed to be caught a little flat-footed on a lot of occasions,” B’s coach Claude Julien admitted. “They were winning those races for those loose pucks. We obviously spent more time in our end then we had wanted to.

“Having said that, I thought we managed our D zone time a lot better than we have in the past in the second period, where there’s some long shifts there of turning pucks over,” Julien continued. “Going into the third after they scored that goal, it just seemed to get our attention and we got ourselves going again. Those games aren’t always perfect but you like the way your team responds to different situations, and we’re down 2-1, instead of panicking we just picked up our game and found a way to get some goals here.”

Well, he said it.

I think the Oilers’ forwards really seemed to push and generate in the Boston end. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had a great game loaded with chances, Benoit Pouliot and David Perron provided spark on the wings, and even Mark Arcobello, the goal-scorer on the Oil’s second goal of the night, did his job of capitalizing on turnovers. But it was a rough night from Nikita Nikitin and the rest of the Edmonton defense that came back to extend the Oilers’ skid to four.

“You can’t give a dangerous team like that power play chances, and they were converted.” Scrivens, who stopped 27-of-31 shots in the losing effort, dropping him to 4-6-0 on the year, said. “We need to find ways to close games out. We’ve just got to find a way to do it. You can’t step backwards and play cautious and just defend. We’re a much better team when we’re going after the other team.”

With the win, the Bruins extended some pretty lengthy streaks against Edmonton. The Bruins have not lost to Edmonton now since Oct. 17, 2000. That was a 6-1 loss in Edmonton, and was a game in which the Bruins’ lone goal came from Brian Rolston, with Jason Allison and Darren Van Impe* picking up the assists. In fact, the Oilers have not beaten the Bruins in this building since Nov. 7, 1996. Mattias Timander was a minus-4 in that game, while Ray Bourque sat out with a shoulder injury. I was a kindergartener.

I never thought I’d write ‘Darren Van Impe’ in a 2014 blog.

When you’re right, you’re right: Smith, Eriksson spark win


With the Bruins committing themselves to the patchwork theory on the first (and fourth line, too) after the summertime loss of last year’s 30-goal scorer, Jarome Iginla, the pressure on Reilly Smith and Loui Eriksson, the two big returns in the Tyler Seguin trade from the summer of 2013, to perform, is there. And by perform, I mean score goals with a greater frequency than that of a year ago.

Thus far, the results have been, well, average.

Smith’s come around as of late on the red-hot Bergeron line and Loui’s been a fixture on the club’s impressive third line centered by Soderberg and with Chris Kelly on the left side, but entering tonight they had a combined four goals on the year. That’s obviously not enough, you’d say.

But both came through with goals tonight, temporarily alleviating some of that pressure.

Smith’s marker came off a beautiful shot, and snapped a nine-game goalless stretch (he hadn’t scored since Oct. 15 against Detroit), while Eriksson’s marker put an end to an eight-game goal drought.

“He’s in the same position I am right now,” Smith said of Eriksson. “It was good to see him bury that, I know he had a couple chances earlier, and sometimes its just not going in the back of the net.”

Now it’s time for the two to string together a little run here a la Brad Marchand.

Notes


- Milan Lucic skated in his 500th NHL game tonight.

- Tonight was the first three-minor game of David Krejci’s NHL career.

- One cool thing: Leon Draisaitl is the highest German-born athlete. Not just in hockey, mind you, but any sport. He beat NBA star Dirk Nowitzki (9th overall in ‘98) by six spots.

- Edmonton forward Iiro Pakarinen made his NHL debut in the loss.

- The Bruins’ sellout streak was extended to 222 straight regular season and playoff games.

Up next

The Bruins will have a rare weekend off before they return to the ice for a Monday night showdown with the New Jersey Devils. This will be Boston’s first look at a New Jersey squad whose roster doesn’t have a Martin Brodeur on it for the first in over two decades. Instead, they’ll have to deal with Massachusetts’ own Cory Schneider, a Boston College alum that’s put together a real hit-or-miss season for the Devils through about a month of hockey. This will also be yet another return to the Garden for former Bruin top-sixers, NHL legend Jaromir Jagr and sniper Michael Ryder.
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