Bruins get some sweet revenge vs. Rangers
B’s bounce back on road in NY
Immediately after the Bruins’ embarrassing 6-2 loss to the New York Rangers Friday, coach Bruce Cassidy began sending messages.
First he called out a handful of players, by name. Then Cassidy made lineup changes. Out went Anders Bjork, Chris Wagner and John Moore. In went Greg McKegg, Karson Kuhlman and Steven Kampfer.
Consider those messages received.
The B’s dominated the undermanned Rangers most of Sunday — their loose play on Colin Blackwell’s third-period goal perhaps the only exception — and captured just their second win in their last six games as they got contributions up and down the lineup in a 4-1 win.
“From the first shift to essentially the last shift, we were going to play the same way, no matter who rolls over the boards,” said Cassidy, whose team had been outscored 13-4 in back-to-back losses in Long Island and Manhattan. “That’s what I loved about our game today. That was our identity. We’re going to play behind you, we’re going to make plays off the rush when we’re there, we’re going to be physical, we’re going to protect the front of our net, we’re going to go to the front of their net.”
There were a couple of unwanted nervous moments when Craig Smith took an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and the Rangers pulled their goalie for a two-skater advantage, but Charlie Coyle salted it away with an empty-netter, his second tally of the game. David Pastrnak picked up a pair of assists.
It was clear from the opening shift the B’s were ready to play. Captain Patrice Bergeron set his sights on physical Ranger defenseman Ryan Lindgren and plastered him to the end boards. Brad Marchand let Lindgren know he was there, too, on the same shift.
The rest of the team followed suit. All day.
“They’re the leaders of this team, so they need to set the standard in a lot of different ways,” said Cassidy “Some of it is performance on the ice, some of it is conducting yourself off the ice, some of it is in the gym, some it is how they practice and and some of it is setting the tone of the game in a physical nature that we’re going to forecheck with a purpose, play behind their D, establish some territory etc. That’s what we wanted to do the first shift and carry that over. So when your leaders bring that message and carry through the staff ’s messaging, then it’s a trickle-down effect.
And that’s what happened.”
The B’s physical play produced the first penalty when Ryan Strome crosschecked an oncoming Sean Kuraly. That power play was wiped out after Nick Ritchie took a roughing double minor for throwing punches at Lindgren after Ritchie fell on goalie Alexander Georgiev’s head in a net-front scrum. Lindgren got a two-minute minor.
On the ensuing 4-on-4, Coyle put the B’s on the board at 6:41 with a pretty goal. Taking a feed from Pastrnak on his off wing, Coyle slipped
the puck under Ranger defenseman K’Andre Miller’s stick and beat Georgiev with a bar-down forehand snap shot.
In the previous contact with Ritchie, Georgiev had been bloodied and went to the bench for repairs, but he was allowed to play on. After the goal, however, he was yanked. He returned to start the second.
After it looked like the Rangers might have weathered the storm, the B’s made it 2- 0 at 18:14. Connor Clifton made a terrific move around Ryan Strome at the left point and fired a shot into a crowd. It went off Trent Frederic and past Igor Shesterkin, giving the B’s their first 2- 0 advantage at the first intermission all season.
The B’s extended their lead to 3- 0 in a second period in which they gave the Rangers next to nothing by way of scoring chances. New York home boy Charlie McAvoy picked up his third goal of the season, ripping a one-timer off a Pastrnak set-up through a Bergeron screen.
That sent the B’s on their merry way to a hard-earned two points.
“I’m really happy with how the team played. We stuck together. It really felt like a must-win. We’re not comfortable with dropping games consecutively so it was good to get the result we wanted,” said McAvoy. “Obviously the urgency of our team was to fix this road trip and finish on a high note. We were able to do that today, so that was great.”