Rask, B’s gain control
Head home with 3-1 series lead
TORONTO — If the Bruins are fortunate enough to go on a long run toward a Stanley Cup, they will most certainly look back on last night’s Game 4 victory as one of those galvanizing moments on the journey.
BRUINS 3 MAPLE LEAFS 1
Playing without Patrice Bergeron (upper body, dayto-day) and needing a stellar performance from goalie Tuukka Rask, the Bruins survived a second-period onslaught from the Toronto Maple Leafs and captured a 3-1 victory at Air Canada Centre to take a commanding 3-1 series lead.
Rask made 31 saves and stopped all 20 shots he saw in the second and third periods. He stopped a Mitch Marner breakaway in the second and thwarted Patrick Marleau with a great pad save on a 2-on-1 in the first for two highlights.
“Tuukka was our savior tonight,” said rookie winger Jake DeBrusk, who scored the insurance goal early in the third period.
Frederik Andersen had earned first star honors in the Leafs’ Game 3 victory here with a tremendous 40-save performance. But while Rask did not need to be quite as spectacular as Andersen, the B’s very well would be going back to Boston tied at 2-2 if he had not played his best.
Now the Bruins can finish the series with a win in Game 5 tomorrow night.
“On the road, you’re going to need a little extra at some point, especially against a team that was down a couple in their building. And we got it,” said B’s coach Bruce Cassidy. “We got it, and we needed it, because early on, they were better. We found our legs, got stronger, started managing it a little better and then we came on and scored some goals for him. It’s a good formula.
“Tonight we needed him to dig and be very good. And he was.”
The teams traded goals in the first period. Torey Krug scored just 28 seconds in when he used a good screen by Riley Nash, who filled in for Bergeron centering the first line. But the Leafs answered at 7:43 when Marner beat Nash to a loose puck and got it to Marleau, who fed Tomas Plekanec to tie the game.
That energized the Leafs, who poured it on after that for much of the first period and a good chunk of the second. The B’s were surviving on their last gasp when they made the play that changed the game.
At the end of the shift and the Leafs threatening, Nash took an icing call. With the B’s players panting, the Leafs smelled blood. But then the Bruins gave them a boot to the gut. Nash won the faceoff to Adam McQuaid, who sent the puck to the left point. That gave David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand a 2-on-1.
“Quaider just threw it off the glass and we tried to get off,” said Pastrnak. “I don’t know which (defenseman) it was, but I was going to play the puck but I saw him coming at me so I moved at the last second and he let me go through for a 2-on-1. You always find the energy for that somehow.”
Marchand admitted he was thinking change first.
“I was. I kind of hung back,” he said. “I thought Pasta was going to get it in and I was just going to hold and let them change and then get over there. But I saw the bounce and luckily it worked out for us.”
Pastrnak drew both defenseman Nikita Zaitsev and Andersen toward him and slipped the puck across ice to Marchand, who did not miss the wide-open net, giving the B’s a 2-1 lead with 3:55 to go in the second. The Leafs never recovered.
Then early in the third, David Krejci blocked a Travis Dermott shot at the left point and took off on a 2-on-1 with DeBrusk, who took a nice saucer pass and snapped it over Andersen’s blocker at 4:17.
“Sometimes when we play a team that is desperate, you need to weather the storm,” said Rask. “Today we did, we did it together and at the end of the day we got the ‘W.’ So that’s great.”