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The Boston Bruins arrived in Brooklyn at about 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, 15 hours before their near must-win against the New York Islanders. It was the B’s fourth game in six days, their second in as many days, and the end of a three-game trip which, to that point, had been a total flop for the club.
But the Bruins straight-up survived a 60-minute onslaught from the Islanders and salvaged their three-game swing, even just a little bit, by way of a 2-1 win at Barclays Center on Sunday.
The B’s first goal came, of course, from their elite power play with a 5-on-3 advantage early in the first.
With Patrice Bergeron shifted up to the point, a brilliant feed to David Krejci then went across the slot and to Ryan Spooner as No. 51 buried his third goal of the season. The goal was put an end to a six-game goalless skid (his first since Oct. 23), and was his second against the Isles this year, and three of his nine 2015-16 points have come against New York.
Boston extended their lead to two late in the second period with Patrice Bergeron’s fifth goal of the season, banked into the New York net off Nick Leddy’s skate and through Jaroslav Halak.
With a two-goal edge their name through two periods of play, and with their last three games starting with leads and ending with losses, the Black and Gold knew that their job was far from finished. And the club did everything they could to make it harder on themselves, too, with six third period penalties against, including one lengthy 5-on-3 advantage for the Blue and Orange.
And the Isles cashed in behind Johnny Boychuk’s five-hole blast on Tuukka Rask.
But behind a 36-of-37 showing from Rask, the Bruins hung on for a 2-1 final, and did just enough to return to Boston on a winning note with a welcomed end to their three-game losing streak.
Random thoughts and notes
- The Bruins started this one with a bit of a line shake-up that dropped Brad Marchand down to the third line with Jimmy Hayes and Spooner, along with a promotion up to the Patrice Bergeron line for Matt Beleskey. Maybe this was head coach Claude Julien’s way of sending a wake-up call to Marchand -- who had skated the previous three games without a point and was a minus-3 over that stretch-- or maybe this was an attempt to spark the Hayes/Spooner combo with a high-tempo, possession driver in Marchand. Either way, it appeared to work for the Bruins, as the six players from both of the affected lines had strong showings in the win. This could -- and if you ask me, will be -- one of the biggest strengths of the Black and Gold this season. Their top-nine is so multidimensional in the sense that you can swap guys here and there on a whim without completely changing the identity or the effectiveness of that line. That was not the case a year ago.
- It’s been just two games, but it’s impossible not to like what Frank Vatrano has brought to the Big B’s. You knew that this was a player that preferred to have the puck on his stick -- he had 10 goals and 37 shots in 10 games with Providence upon his recall on Friday -- and that’s remained the case, even in his callup to the National Hockey League. Vatrano has looked anything but passive in two games, shoots the puck from everywhere, and peppered Halak for five shots in the win.
The East Longmeadow, Mass. native looks hellbent on making life harder for GM Don Sweeney. Younger players hungry to do anything they can to stick with the club? Not the worst problem.
- You just had a feeling that the B’s penalty-kill was going to need to have a game like this for the club to snap out of their funk. They went a near-perfect 6-for-7 on the kill, with five of those six kills coming in a heated third period of play. The 6-for-7 showing pumped their penalty-killing percentage up from 68% to 70% for the year, and while it’s still ranked dead last, there’s clearly momentum that can generated from such a showing. That’s something Julien and Co. has longed for with the unit, too.
Up next
The Bruins will have a deserved total off day on Monday before returning to practice on Tuesday and Wednesday. And it’s on to a five-game homestand for the club, the longest of the season, which starts with a Thursday night showdown with Carl Soderberg and the Colorado Avalanche. It will be Soderberg’s first game back in Boston, the city he called home for his first three seasons in the National Hockey League, since leaving the club in a trade-and-sign with the Avalanche this past summer.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.