Resilient Bruins regain NHL’s top spot
Bruins 6 Flyers 5
Hello again, first place.
The Bruins exploded for three goals in the opening 2:56 of the third period and then held on for dear life Saturday night to pin a wild 6-5 loss on the Flyers and will now start the new week with a league-high 95 points.
Boston had been at the top of the heap for much of the year but was overtaken by the Panthers (94) in recent weeks.
Tied at 2 after two, Charlie Coyle, Johnny Beecher, and Jake DeBrusk lit the lamp during Boston’s blitz.
It seemed like a comfortable spot, but the descendants of the Broad Street Bullies made it uncomfortable with a spurt of their own.
The Flyers cut it to 5-4 on goals from Nick Deslauriers — his first in 64 games — and Morgan Frost. Danton Heinen gave the Bruins breathing room that they would end up needing when Joel Farabee made it 6-5 with a highlightreel goal with the goalie pulled.
“Yeah, it was kind of a roller-coaster,” said Coyle, who scored a pair of goals and now has a career-high 23. “We started out great, we extend the lead and feeling good about our game, and they’re a tough team, play hard and they’re trying to keep a playoff spot and get in, and we knew they weren’t going to sit back.
“So, yeah, there’s some things we can clear up and I think our game dipped a little bit there as it went on. I don’t know if we got complacent or what, but we can’t afford to play like that and have that mind-set. It’s up to us to correct that and it’s things we can still get better at and work on, but it’s nice to grab 2 points and be able to work on that stuff at the same time.”
Extending leads and closing out teams have been bugaboos for the Bru
ins this season. Against the Flyers, they accomplished the former but not the latter.
While clearly not happy with all areas of his team’s performance, Bruins coach Jim Montgomery preferred to accentuate the positives.
“Well, it’s not hard for me to look at it as a glass half full,” said the coach. “And it’s why you want to learn these lessons — and the desperation of the teams, our schedule’s really tough here down the stretch — so we’re going to continue to play teams that are fighting for playoffs or fighting for position in playoffs, which is what we like because we want to be prepared for all these things that are going to happen come playoff time.”
Among the biggest positives has been the resurgence of DeBrusk. Keeping the winger may have been the club’s shrewdest move of trade deadline week as the winger has scored goals in three of the four games since it passed and he now has 17 on the season.
“I feel like I’ve been playing pretty well. I feel like finally things are just going my way,” said DeBrusk. “My goal is a perfect example: bounces off three people right to me and no one’s on me in the slot and I have a lot of time to think about it and then guys are finishing.
“I think that there’ve been lots of chances and posts and close plays this year where just I think that that’s kind of the biggest difference between my years previous, and this one is I feel like I’ve been generating pretty consistently throughout.”
The Flyers struck first when Ryan Poehling finished a twoon-one with Garnet Hathaway.
The Bruins tied when Morgan Geekie took a feed from DeBrusk and snuck a good oldfashioned slapper from the top of the circle over Sandstrom’s blocker and under the crossbar at 15:51.
“I thought Philadelphia was playing pretty well and we needed kind of a little pushback, so a little slap shot there,” said DeBrusk. “I was surprised when I was going into three bodies, but hey, goal scorers know what to do. So, it was a great shot by him and kind of got the ball rolling in the sense of our team game.”
DeBrusk and Parker Wotherspoon were credited with assists on Geekie’s sweet 16th of the season, though the biggest helper belonged to Jeremy Swayman, who stopped two Travis Konecny shots on a breakaway that led to the Bostonbreakout.
Farabee gave Philadelphia a 2-1 lead when he notched his 20th of the season by chopping down Cam York’s blue-line shot past Swayman just after a Bruin penalty expired.
The Bruins pulled even again when Coyle buried a Marchand feed on the doorstep with Poehling off for hooking David Pastrnak, setting the stage for the crazy third period.
“It’s almost a win-win and I guess that’s kind of a weird phrase, but you get 2 points, that’s what we came here to do, we got it right, and we can still improve our game upon that,” said Coyle. “I think that can be used as a positive and we still got a couple handful of games left until this real deal starts, but we get a focus on each one individually and fine-tuning our game and this gives us another chance to do that.”