Bruins better late
Rally ends homestand in a sweep
With the chance to win six in a row for the first time this season and become the seventh team in NHL history to sweep a six-game homestand, the Bruins had to adjust their mentality between the second and third periods yesterday.
The result was a four-goal outburst and a 7-4 comeback win against the Chicago Blackhawks at the Garden.
The B’s stayed within six points of the Tampa Bay Lightning for first place in the Atlantic Division with three games in hand heading into their road rematch with the Blackhawks today.
“We talked about our will to win, how it’s been there this week and this homestand or all year,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said. “I thought we had it in our pockets, but theirs was greater than ours I thought through two periods. We were OK, and that’s what the result was looking like, it’d be just OK. So it’s kind of the ball’s in our court, if we want to push. And we did, we won some pucks.”
Down 4-3 in the third period, the Bruins started to show that will to win when Rick Nash stole a puck from Chicago goaltender J-F Berube and just missed tying the game because Berube got back in the crease for the save. On the next shift, David Pastrnak crashed the net and scored on the rebound of a Brad Marchand shot at 6:23 to tie the score 4-4 after Riley Nash led a 3-on-2.
Sean Kuraly, who recorded the first Gordie Howe hat trick of his career, drew a high-sticking double-minor on Blackhawks star Patrick Kane at 6:43 to continue the rally. At 8:02, Brian Gionta stuffed in a Matt Grzelcyk shot that had been deflected twice to put the Bruins ahead.
Rick Nash scored on a tip-in of a Torey Krug shot 1:16 later to make it 6-4 and Kuraly put the game away with an empty-net goal with 22 seconds left.
“You feel good when they score on the power play, that’s for sure, and to get two on that power play it feels good,” Kuraly said.
The Bruins joined the Philadelphia Flyers (1984-85), Edmonton Oilers (1986-87), Detroit Red Wings (2011-12), Los Angeles Kings (2014-15) and Florida Panthers (2015-16 and ’17-18) in sweeping six-game homestands.
“Obviously that’s huge,” Nick Holden said. “We’re trying to catch Tampa Bay and they keep winning (the Lightning won in a shootout yesterday against the Montreal Canadiens) so we need to keep winning, so when you’re at home you want to make sure you’re playing your best hockey. Some of (yesterday’s) game, there were parts of it that were not quite as sound as we like, but for the most part I thought we played good hockey.”
The Bruins, who ranked third in the league in fewest 5-on-5 goals allowed, were outscored 4-1 at 5-on-5 and 4-3 overall through the first two periods. The home team grabbed a 2-0 lead on an even-strength goal by Noel Acciari 11:27 into the game and David Krejci’s first of two powerplay goals 2:43 later.
But the Blackhawks responded almost immediately to tie things up. Jonathan Toews deflected Erik Gustafsson’s slap shot past Tuukka Rask (23 saves) just 17 seconds after Krejci’s goal. Gustafsson then scored his own goal on a slap shot through a John Hayden screen 29 seconds later.
Hayden beat Rask at 6:27 of the second period to give the Blackhawks their first lead, before Krejci scored his second goal with the man advantage at 10:05. The Blackhawks regained the advantage when Matthew Highmore scored at 15:46. Then the Bruins regrouped during the intermission.
“I mean that’s the beauty of our team,” Rask said. “We kind of do things together and when we decide after a few minutes into the third enough’s enough, we’ll start playing our hockey, it looked good. They’re a good team, you’ve got to give them credit, they make plays when you give them time and space. They made some plays but we never quit.”