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For the second time in three nights, the Boston Bruins were under siege by a relentless offensive onslaught. And for the second time in three nights, the B’s simply weathered the storm the best they could behind strong penalty-killing and even better netminding, stole two points, and extended their winning streak, this time by a 3-2 final against the Detroit Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena.
First-year forward Frank Vatrano welcomed himself back to the Boston lineup after missing the previous two contests with an upper-body injury with his second goal of the season, scored 7:11 into the first period, with the assists to Joonas Kemppainen and Landon Ferraro.
Vatrano’s tally would hold as the lone goal of the opening frame, but the Wings responded in the middle frame, with goals from Pavel Datsyuk at 2:26 and Tomas Tatar at 14:53.
Datsyuk’s goal was good for just his second of his season (though the 300th of his NHL career) while Tatar’s strike was good for his seventh of the season and his fourth in the last seven games played.
The Black and Gold continued to chase the game-tying goal for most of the third -- forced to kill off two penalties on the way -- before Colin Miller broke through with his already signature bomb from the point off a beautiful dropback dish from Loui Eriksson at 18:16 of the third period.
Miller’s second goal of the season propelled the Bruins to their second-straight overtime, and as an exhausted trio of Eriksson, David Krejci and Torey Krug successfully survived a near minute-long stretch in their own end, the B’s pushed pace the other way at a frantic pace.
That opened the door for Vatrano’s second tally of the night though Red Wings goaltender Petr Mrazek, collected on a tip-in off another Miller blast, and enough for a 3-2 Boston victory.
With the victory, the Bruins matched their season-high winning streak of four games, and head into Thanksgiving in third place in the Atlantic Division with an impressive 12-8-1 mark on the season.
Random thoughts and notes
- Frankie Vatrano has a flair for the dramatic, doesn’t he? Think about it-- the East Longmeadow, Mass. native scores in his NHL debut in Montreal. And though he doesn’t score in the games that follow, he remains a pivotal part of the Boston attack with a relentless ability to battle for loose pucks and throw any puck he can find on net. (Seriously, this kid has never seen a puck he didn’t want to shoot.)
But then he gets dinged up in a game against the Minnesota Wild, misses two contests, comes back, and instantly finds paydirt with the game’s first goal, and of course, the game’s last goal.
There hasn’t been a player since I’d say that Torey Krug that’s come up and said, “Hell no, I’m not going back to the American Hockey League… with his play quite like Vatrano. At this rate, the B’s are gonna need to physically drop him out of the team airplane into Providence for him to go back to the minors. That’s not the worst problem to have. And you can see the Bruins -- in even the simplest of ways -- prepping to keep No. 72 around when David Pastrnak is set to return to action. That’s how I’d explain slotting Vatrano in on the B’s third line with Ryan Spooner and Brett Connolly, anyways.
The 21-year-old now has three goals and 22 shots in seven games for the Big B’s this season.
- The Bruins should have lost this game. Just like they should have lost Monday’s game.
But this was a straight-up survivalist effort from the Black and Gold in their crease.
So, while you’ll take the two points, the Bruins are allowing far too many shots against their net in the last 128 minutes of hockey or so, so expect Claude Julien to try and tighten up as the competition stiffens with a visit from the New York Rangers on Friday. (They’ll absolutely need to.)
- It was a secondary assist, but still-- that’s two assists in two games with the Bruins for Landon Ferraro. Hard to recall that kind of production from any relatively recent Bruins waiver-wire claim.
Up next
The Bruins return home for a rare Thursday off (Thanksgiving) before returning to the TD Garden on Friday afternoon for a Black Friday matinee against the New York Rangers. This will be the first head-to-head of 2015-16 between the B’s and Blueshirts. The Rangers have remained among the class of the Eastern Conference thus far by way of a 16-4-2 record (and 6-2-1 mark on the road).
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Boston Chapter of the Pro Hockey Writers Association since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.