No Garden magic again
Bruins can’t copy Celtics’ comeback
It was going to be a second straight night of stirring, heartpounding Garden comebacks, a second straight night when a pro sports outfit from the Hub staked a claim to advancing to its league’s conference final.
First it was the Celtics — the youthful, rebuilt-on-the-fly, seemingly-in-over-their-heads Celtics — who roared back from a 22-point deficit Thursday night to earn a 108-103 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers and take a 2-0 lead in their Eastern Conference semifinal series.
Last night it was as though Game 4 of the Bruins’ Eastern Conference semifinal against the Tampa Bay Lightning was some magical continuation of Thursday’s C’s comeback, as the B’s rallied from a 2-0 first-period deficit, tied the game, and even took a third-period lead when Patrice Bergeron redirected a Brad Marchand pass past Tampa Bay goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy. That’s where the magic ends. That’s where the comeback ends.
That’s where the link to Thursday night gets snapped like a twig.
Game 4 ended at 3:18 into overtime, as Tampa Bay’s Dan Girardi one-handed a feed from Alex Killorn past Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask to give the Lightning a 4-3 victory and a 3-1 lead in the series.
It was an entertaining game, a game of comebacks and lead changes and hard hitting, but it’ll go into the books as a game in which the officiating once again ripped the headlines away from the actual hockey.
Consider how the Lightning tied the game and sent it to overtime. Steven Stamkos beat Rask to the glove side with 7:04 remaining — this after Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov was not penalized for tripping Charlie McAvoy, a gaffe that’ll be debated around here right up to the puck drop for tomorrow’s Game 5 in Tampa.
It was only two days ago that the stoic Bruins seemed determined not to hold pity parties over penalties and non-penalties, and McAvoy continued in that role last night when, speaking almost in a whisper, he said, “I’m not going to comment on the officiating.”
Marchand, however, was not bound by such decorum.
“We had the lead and it was a very blatant grab on Chuckie’s shoulder,” he said, almost matterof-factly. “It turned into a goal. The missed calls that are costing goals in the game. You know, it’s unfortunate that they can’t get it right.”
And so ended a crazy, crazy Garden cycle. What had begun with the Celtics falling down and getting up again ended with the Bruins falling down, getting up again ... and then being tripped. Literally.
The hours leading up to Game 4 were a mixture of unexpected handwringing and organized chaos. The unexpected handwringing — for Bruins fans — arose from the fact that Marchand, a veteran game-changer/instigator, and rookie sensation Jake DeBrusk were absent from Thursday’s practice because of what B’s coach Bruce Cassidy termed “maintenance days,” followed by the news yesterday morning that their participation would be game-time decisions.
The organized chaos? There are times when the stars align to the degree that the Garden bull gang is tasked with performing miracles, and yesterday was just such an occasion. Following the Celtics-76ers playoff game the crew worked into the wee hours transforming the Garden for yesterday’s Northeastern University commencement. And then, once a cast of newly minted, degree-toting Huskies spilled onto Causeway Street, the bull gang prepared the barn for hockey.
With Marchand and DeBrusk in uniform, the Bruins took the ice as a fully armed and operational battle station. (That’s a “May the 4th Be With You” reference, folks.) The B’s also added a football element to the proceedings when they unleashed former Patriot Tedy Bruschi as their honorary Fan Banner Captain.
And then the game started, and soon the Lightning were exploring a football theme of their own. It happened at 4:36 of the first period, as Tampa Bay’s Brayden Point played Stephen Gostkowski by splitting the uprights — that is, Bruins defensemen Zdeno Chara and McAvoy — and put a shot past Rask from in tight to give the Lightning a 1-0 lead.
It was a buzzkill of the highest order — the veteran and the kid being pantsed by the aggressive Point — and things got worse at 9:53 when Kucherov scored on the power play after Chara had been whistled for delay of game.
The Bruins finally livened the place up thanks to David Pastrnak, whose eyes must have lit up when a loose puck fell from the sky and he batted it past Vasilevskiy.
Bergeron’s first goal, a powerplay effort in the second period, tied the game 2-2. And then the third period began and everyone — including Bruschi, the bull gang and any newly minted Northeastern graduates who have may have been hanging around — settled in to see if the Bruins were going to do their part to turn the Garden into a Celtics/ Bruins Conference Call.
That’s not looking so good right now.