Swayman lifts B’s over the Habs
The Bruins haven’t exactly been playing like Stanley Cup favorites the last couple of games, but their goalies have been there to make sure they didn’t pay the consequences for it.
After Linus Ullmark stopped 40 shots on Tuesday to beat Ottawa, Jeremy Swayman made 29 saves, some of them spectacular, to lead the B’s to a 4-2 win over the Montreal Canadiens at the Garden on Thursday.
David Pastrnak’s career-high 49th goal early in the second period held up as the game-winner (he was robbed of No. 50 later in the second) while problems on the power play (0-for-5) cropped up again in a game in which the B’s spent too much time in their own zone, getting outshot, 31-21.
Coach Jim Montgomery admitted to a little concern over the necessity of standout goaltending lately, but also allowed that, given several cicrumstances, it is to be expected for his 55-11-5 team. And the two games haven’t been all bad.
“Again, in both games in the third period, I thought we played the right way,” said Montgomery. “We were very loose before that. Happy that we got the two points. It’s a tough league to win in. I know we’ve won a lot this year, but it really is. And with the schedule as challenging as it is now, it’s four in six nights consecutively for five weeks, so we’re not going to have the most energy. I don’t think we skated very well tonight, but it’s understandable at times. But you’ve got to give credit to those guys. We find a way to win hockey games.”
Considering the grind of the schedule, it stands to reason that the B’s would lean on their netminders. That’s what they’re there for, said Swayman.
“We want to do our job every night, whether we have two days off or no days off,” said Swayman. “Everyone goes through it. This whole league goes through it. We know every time we touch ice we want to help the team have a chance to win every night. Some games are good, some games are bad. We just want to do our job every night.”
The first period was highlighted by the fact that, despite a yawning gap between the teams in the standings, the B’s and Habs will never play nice, even though the league has done its best to water down one of the best rivalries in sports.
There was bad blood aplenty in the first period that saw 31 penalty minutes dished out while the B’s took a 2-1 lead.
The B’s jumped on top at 4:34 on Tyler Bertuzzi’s first as a Bruin. It wasn’t a pretty one but, with the luck he’s had, he’ll take it. He beat Chris Wideman behind the net in a puck battle and tried a centering pass, but it went off goalie Jake Allen and into the net.
Then at 7:50, tempers flared. Well after the puck was gone and behind the play, Rem Pitlick took a run at Patrice Bergeron, knocking him to the ice. He was going for interference, but that was not enough for Brad Marchand. He made a bee line for Pitlick, flinging his gloves off and pounding the Hab with punches on the ice as Canadien players tried to pull him off. Marchand got four minutes and Pitlick got two.
“You don’t hit our captain late,” said Montgomery. “That was a three-second late hit and I liked — I loved — the fact that Marchand made the guy a price for doing it.”
The B’s took a 2-0 lead at 13:38 on another beauty from Jake DeBrusk. Just as Connor Clifton was making his way out of the penalty box, Bergeron banked a pass up to him in the neutral zone and Clifton handed it off to a rushing DeBrusk. The fleet wing split Joel Edmundson and David Savard — the two D-men comically colliding in his wake — and he beat Allen with his 24th over the blocker.
Nastiness continued. Jake Evans drew the ire of Charlie McAvoy when he gave Swayman a snow shower, with McAvoy burying Evans and precipitating more pushing and shoving.
The B’s then got themselves in trouble on a faceoff. A.J. Greer was jousting on a faceoff with Mike Hoffman, who had gotten away with a two-hand slash ton the back of Tomas Nosek’s legs earlier in the game. Greer then crosschecked Hoffman straight in the face, earning himself a five-minute major and the gate at 17:08. Greer could well get a call from the Department of Player Safety.
“We talk about playing with emotion, which is great, but not getting emotional,” said Montgomery. “Unfortunately, Greersie, his stick rode up … and it cut him. It’s something we can learn from, because you can’t take those kind of penalties in the playoffs.”
With 19 seconds left in the period, Nick Suzuki got the Habs back to within a goal on a onetimer, and they still had over two minutes of PP time. The goal snapped Swayman’s shutout streak at 164:33.
They were able to kill that, thanks to a great save by Swayman on Rafael Harvey-Pinard followed by Swayman gloving the puck just before the goal line.
Back at full strength, the B’s recaptured their two-goal lead at 2:36 of the second. Bertuzzi sent a pea of a pass to Pastrnak at the left circle and, after the sniper made a shimmy move to the middle, he sifted it through Allen.
But the Habs controlled the rest of the period and eventually got it back to a one-goal game. After Garnet Hathaway was called for holding, the Habs crept back to within a goal with 3:47 left in the period. Kirby Dach scored on a redirect of a perfect Mike Matheson pass to make it 3-2.
The B’s took the rather shaky one-goal lead into the third period but they finally created some breathing room with 7:44 remaining in the third when David Krejci beat Allen with a backhander for his 16th of the year.
That was finally enough. Swayman continued to make stops and was also fortunate late in the game when both Denis Gurianov and Jonathan Drouin missed open nets in the last couple of minutes.
After Allen vacated the net for an extra skater, Swayman tried to score his own goalie goal and then Marchand tried to set up Pastrnak for No. 50. In a fitting ending to challenging night, they couldn’t pull off either feel-good moment. But as usual, no bump in the road got in the way of them posting yet another W.