Bruins come back to douse Flames
CALGARY — If you like chaos, this was the game for you.
The Flames jumped ahead by two less than three minutes into the game but that was far from all the scoring, as the Bruins stormed back in a crazy opening frame to take a 4-3 win in Calgary on the third game of their road trip.
The Bruins didn’t take a lead until early in the second period and held on against the Flames attack to win their fifth in a row and 11 out of their last 12 contests.
It wasn’t a smooth path to victory; after the Flames jumped ahead, the Bruins’ offense had a surge of its own before the scoring stalled deep into the contest.
Just 20 seconds in Mikael Granlund put the Flames on the board with a shot from the slot. Two minutes later, he he sniped a shot past Jaroslav Halak on a broken Bruins defensive effort.
Patrice Bergeron, who has goals in six of his last seven games, sliced into the Flames lead with a goal 24 seconds after Backlund’s second. For his 28th goal of the season, Bergeron chipped a rebound off a David Pastrnak shot past Cam Talbot.
The Flames kept up the quick pace and regained their two-goal lead less than half a minute later. Boston College alum Johnny Gaudreau tried to make a pass down low that deflected off a stickless Jeremy Lauzon and past Halak for a 3-1 Flames lead.
Bergeron, though, wasn’t done.
The B’s center needed less than three minutes to bring them back within one, as he tapped in a loose puck off the boards right off an offensive zone faceoff.
With 12:20 gone in the frame, Charlie Coyle tied it.
Anders Bjork blocked a shot at the defending blueline and passed to Karson Kuhlman, who found Coyle in the neutral zone and sent him off to the races, and he beat Talbot up high for the 3-3 score.
That pace didn’t stop early in the second.
Brandon Carlo rifled a shot from the boards 52 seconds into the frame and Brad Marchand tipped it in front of Talbot for the B’s first lead of the night, 4-3. It was his first goal in seven games.
Internal competition
The Bruins went out and got their right winger.
The roster is going to change; Ondrej Kase is going to play on the right side of either David Krejci or Charlie Coyle, which inevitably bumps someone like Karson
Kuhlman, Anders Bjork even Danton Heinen.
Internal competition has been the theme of the past month-plus for the Bruins, and even though they added externally, that doesn’t change.
Kase is going to play once he’s healthy — he hasn’t played since Feb. 9 and is on injured reserve — and that bumps at least one regular, and that’s if they don’t make any other moves,
The rosters expand, so the trio of young wingers are safe in that regard, but likely only two will play.
“Our players can feel comfortable about that part of it,” said Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy. “At the end of the day, who knows? Monday’s the deadline, I don’t know what (Bruins general manager) Don (Sweeney) will do going forward.” or