Be sure to 'like' Hockeybuzz on Facebook!
The writing was on the wall for another meltdown in Montreal.
Up by one through two periods of play thanks to Austin Czarnik’s first goal in 16 games and his third goal of the season, scored with just over a minute left in the middle frame, the Canadiens finally answered with a Paul Byron goal scored with just 3:12 left in the third period.
Moved to a three-on-three overtime with 20,000-plus lunatics on top of the ice, you just expected the Boston Bruins to crack on the first chance against, especially when Tuukka Rask was taken out with a body check by Torrey Mitchell along the walls and left to scramble back to his crease.
But the ice tilted Boston’s way, and it was David Krejci that tucked home a chance originally generated by David Pastrnak’s take-no-prisoners crash into Price’s net. Slid into the net with Price taken out of the play, an official review rightly determined that it was Pastrnak’s crash into Price that allowed Krejci to put the puck home in the first place, and the overtime resume.
To ask the Bruins, a team that entered play with one of the weakest offenses in the entire NHL, to score two overtime goals just to score one, against Carey Price of all people, was crazy. But crazy had its say, as the Bruins pinned the Canadiens in their own zone for well over a minute before it was Ryan Spooner that broke through and tallied the game-winner on Price and the Habs.
The 29-year-old Rask made 30 saves in the winning effort.
It was the Black and Gold’s first victory over Price since Feb. 6, 2013.
This and that
- I had no problem with the Torey Krug hit on Canadiens forward Andrew Shaw. If for no other reason than the simple fact that it’s not even close to a hit to the head if Shaw doesn’t put himself in an extremely vulnerable position with a last-second extension down in an attempt to further play the puck. When you do that, the onus is on you to protect yourself, and Shaw didn’t do that by the time Krug had already committed to the check. If there’s not that late lunge by Shaw, this is not a hit upstairs, but rather your normal body-on-body check.
Krug will not face a disciplinary hearing for the hit.
- The Bruins had to kill entirely too many penalties in this one. Five, to be exact. And against a Montreal power play that came into action with a 21.4 percent success rate on home ice, too, the seventh-best percentage in the league in that regard. But you had to just absolutely love what you saw from the Black and Gold penalty kill on the five-for-five night, as the Bruins really limited the Habs’ biggest weapons on the power play, which is no easy feat given the variety of ways that their power play can and has beaten several teams (be it Shea Weber’s bomb from the point, Alex Radulov’s shot, or Gallagher’s severely underrated work around the front of the net).
- Try to make sense of this. At the Bell Centre, Rask has six wins and a .933 save percentage in 12 career starts. Back home and against the Habs at TD Garden, Rask is 0-9-3 with an .890 save percentage. That seems borderline impossible to accomplish, to be honest. But hey, maybe it’s a reason for optimism for if and when the B’s meet the Habs in the playoffs as a lower seed.
Up next
The Bruins travel to Pittsburgh to take on a straight-up wagon of a hockey team in the Penguins. The second-best team in the Eastern Conference, the Penguins enter play with six straight wins to their name, and have outscored their opponents 35-to-14 over that span. Overall, the Pens are a damn near unbeatable 12-2-1 on home ice this season. But believe it or not (and I aligned in the not), however, the Bruins swept their season series with the Penguins a season ago. How? I have no idea.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010 and has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013. Ty is also the Boston Bruins beat writer and columnist for WEEI.com, and can also be found in the New England Hockey Journal. Contact him on Twitter or send him an email at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.