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The Boston Bruins made a fatal mistake at the Scotiabank Saddledome on Monday night: They fell asleep on the upstart Calgary Flames after jumping out to a 3-1 lead after two periods of play.
Everything was going well for the Bruins, too.
Well, for one (and for the first time in six games), the B’s struck first.
Brad Marchand scored his first shorthanded goal of the season (and his 16th goal of the year, tying him with Patrice Bergeron for the team lead) 6:48 into the first. The goal on Calgary’s Kari Ramo, the 14th shorthanded strike of Marchand’s career, came on a great 2-on-1 sequence following Bergeron snatching the puck up on a botched drop-back pass from the Flames’ TJ Brodie.
Boston captain Zdeno Chara pushed their lead out to 2-0 on a one-time blast, courtesy of a great dish from Dougie Hamilton, while David Pastrnak picked up the secondary assist.
Chara’s bomb put an end to a 14-game goalless drought for the 6-foot-9 captain, and held as the final goal of the period, with Boston holding a 2-0 edge in goals and 8-7 edge in shots through 20 minutes.
The Bruins pushed their edge to 3-0 50 seconds into the second, as Torey Krug took advantage of a whiffed shot from Reilly Smith, and tucked his 11th goal of the season by a sprawled Ramo. Krug’s goal, his first since Jan. 29 and third in the last nine games, put an end to Ramo’s night, as Calgary coach Bob Hartley signaled for Jonas Hiller, relieving Ramo after just eight saves.
And moments into Hiller’s entrance, the Bruins appeared to make it 4-0. On a Milan Lucic wrister that the officials signaled as a goal, a review showed that the puck went off the elbow of the crossbar to Hiller’s right, and kept the never-say-die Flames alive in spite of their three-goal hole.
David Jones cut the Boston lead to two with his 11th goal of the season scored 6:52 into the middle frame, with the Flames surviving a four-minute Johnny Gaudreau penalty to end the period.
Riding the momentum of a strong finish to the second, the Flames, who entered play with a plus-32 goal differential in the third period this season (the best in the league), and the league’s second-best winning percentage when trailing after two, went to work.
Calgary forward Jiri Hudler scored just 3:22 into the third, beating a lost Boston defense pairing of Matt Bartkowski and Dennis Seidenberg for his 17th of the season, and setting the stage for yet another white-knuckle finish for Tuukka Rask and the Bruins.
But in a 10-shot third period, Rask stood tall.
He made highlight reel stop after stop, including a Lance Bouma breakaway chance late in the third, but when Pastrnak found himself in the box for a high-stick against the Flames’ Dennis Wideman, the 27-year-old goaltender simply ran out of big stops. With a sea of jerseys in front of his crease, Rask was unable to stop a Hudler deflection off a Mark Giordano point shot that split Bergeron and Marchand and got through Chara, tying the Bruins and Flames up at 3-3 with just 5:09 to go in regulation.
The score held through 60 minutes, and until the 4:58 mark of overtime, when Brodie somehow found the space to put the puck through Rask, delivering the Bruins a gut-punch of an overtime loss. The loss makes it four in a row for the Black and Gold, their longest losing streak since Mar. 2012.
Random thoughts and notes
- Defenseman Kevan Miller made his way down the tunnel before the end of the second period, didn’t return for the end of the period, and didn’t return for the third either. Appearing to sustain an upper-body injury on a collision near the Boston bench, the injury comes with an obvious concern given Miller’s recent injury history. Specifically to his right shoulder. Miller has already confirmed that he’ll likely need offseason surgery, and another blow to an already sensitive area could accelerate that process.
“It doesn’t look good,… Claude Julien said of the club’s first assessment of the Miller injury.
If Miller’s expected to miss any time (and it sounds like he will), you can expect Adam McQuaid, a healthy scratch tonight, to slide back into the lineup and on that third-pairing with Torey Krug.
- An utterly invisible showing from one Carl Soderberg tonight. In 18:45 of time on ice, the big Swede had one shot on net, one attempt blocked, a missed shot, and lost seven of eight faceoffs. Soderberg, an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year, was noticeably lackluster without his preferred right winger, Loui Eriksson, and I think it’s fair to suggest that Soderberg may benefit from Eriksson more than Eriksson benefits from Soderberg. You’ll need a larger sample size, of course, but if that continues to be the case, it may be in the Bruins’ best interest to see if they can get something in return before No. 34 surely walks this by way of a deal the Bruins simply won’t be able to match in both dollars or years this summer.
Of course, the flip side to this is that it’d be awfully hard to part with the center of what’s likely your most consistent one-two punch other than Bergeron-Marchand, and would by all means signal the belief that you simply don’t believe that your club can legitimately contend in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Bruins, even at their height of their struggles throughout the Julien era, seldom send that message to their fanbase.
- That was Calgary’s first home win against the Bruins since Oct. 30, 2008. Dion Phaneuf, Mike Cammalleri, and Dustin Boyd scored the goals for the Flames that night. So, yeah, it’s been a little while.
Up next
The Black and Gold will make their way towards Edmonton for a Wednesday night battle with the Oilers. The Oilers are once again the laughing stock of the NHL, with just 16 wins and 41 points in 57 games, and are once again expected to be selling parts off their roster before the Mar. 2 Trade Deadline. Jeff Petry, a right-shooting defenseman, is a name that the Bruins could have interest in, while Jordan Eberle is the distant (and I mean distant) longshot option. The Bruins won the prior head-to-head meeting between these two by a 5-2 final at TD Garden back on Nov. 6.
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com