The Bruins overcame an awful first period, a two-goal deficit, the loss of two defensemen and a five-minute major penalty against them in the third period to notch their best character victory of the young season on Monday at the Garden.
Just earning a point would have been considered a pretty solid moral victory considering the circumstances, but Pavel Zacha topped off the electric comeback with the winner with 1:24 left in overtime to lift the B’s to a 3-2 win over the Florida Panthers that seemed highly improbable earlier in the night.
“It was a very gutsy win and we stuck with it for all 60-plus minutes,” said Linus Ullmark, who made 36 saves for the win.
The win will not erase the pain that the Panthers inflicted on the B’s last April, as captain Brad Marchand readily admitted, but it should serve as a pretty good building block.
“I just think you can build some confidence,” said Marchand, who started the comeback. “These are the games, especially going down the stretch and in the playoffs, that you have to be able to win. Right now, it’s just another two points but it’s definitely something where we can understand when we come in between periods, look at our game and make adjustments, it can make a difference. We saw that tonight.”
After the brutal first period in which they went down 2-0, the B’s found their footing in the second with a Marchand goal and then Charlie McAvoy tied it up at 7:20 of the third period off a beautiful rush. Zacha made a nice touch pass to David Pastrnak, who had speed going through the neutral zone. Pastrnak sliced from left to right through the offensive zone and lifted a pass to the rushing McAvoy, who flipped home his second goal in as many games past Sergei Bobrovsky.
But McAvoy put his team in a hole with a hit to the head on Oliver Ekman-Larson with the puck nowhere close to the area in the offensive zone, earning a match penalty and possibly a couple of games off. That gave the Panthers a five-minute power play and put the B’s down four defensemen after Matt Grzelcyk had left the game in the first period with an upper body injury (he’s expected to miss a couple of weeks).
The B’s and their fantastic penalty killers (now 36-of-37 on the season) did their job and survived the major, pushing the game to OT.
“It was tremendous character by our four defensemen (Brandon Carlo, Derek Forbort, Hampus Lindholm and Kevin Shattenkirk) that gutted it out. And also for our team coming back against a real good team from 2-0 down and be able to find a way to win,” said coach Jim Montgomery.
It was the night before Halloween, but the Bruins experienced all their nightmarish flashbacks from last spring in the first period, when the Panthers won all the key battles at the blue lines, got their sticks in lanes to thwart scoring chances and utterly frustrated the B’s on breakouts.
The B’s incurred their first multi-goal deficit in the opening 20 minutes – and it could have been worse than the 2-0 score that it was. The Panthers dominated, outshooting the B’s 16-6 in the first.
The B’s had a glimmer of spark in the early going, but it quickly blew up in their faces.
Rookie Matt Poitras broke in on an odd-man rush and from the left wing fired a shot that Bobrovsky kicked out for a long rebound. With McAvoy pinched down at the right point, Sasha Barkov took off on a 2-on-1 with Sam Reinhart. Grzelcyk took Reinhart and gave Ullmark the shooter, but the goalie’s glove could not catch up to Barkov’s wrister at 6:13.
That seemed to throw the B’s into disarray, as they continued to cough up the puck all over the ice. The Panthers doubled their lead at 15:08. Poitras lost the puck behind the B’s net and Barkov pounced on it. He circled the cage and found Reinhart out front for Reinhart’s eighth of the season.
In the second, Montgomery shifted his lines, moving Zacha to the wing with Poitras and Pastrnak, and putting Charlie Coyle with Jake DeBrusk and Marchand. On top of that, the B’s simplified their game, got pucks behind their defensemen and got to their own forecheck.
The B’s also came with more snarl – and it paid immediate dividends. On one shift, Shattenkirk dropped Anton Lundell with a forearm and Morgan Geekie deposited Nick Cousins into the Florida bench, creating the first buzz in the building.
“It got some juice to the bench and it got the crowd going, too,” said Montgomery.
Then, at 3:38 of the second, the B’s gave Florida a dose of their own medicine to draw to within a goal. Coyle kept a puck in at the blue line and fed a circling DeBrusk. DeBrusk took it deep down the right wing and fed it out front for Marchand, who just got his stick on it to nudge it past Bobrovsky, who’d come out of his net to face a potential DeBrusk shot. It was Marchand’s fifth of the year.
The B’s finally had some momentum, but it was thwarted by a bad call. Geekie was clearly knocked into Bobrovsky by defenseman Josh Mahura but he was sent off for goalie interference. The B’s killed that off and, at the end of the kill, the Panthers lost Sam Bennett, who was making his season debut after suffering a lower body injury in the preseason. Bennett got tangled up with Hampus Lindholm and appeared to hurt his left knee, needing help to get off the ice.
Heading into the third, the B’s remained in striking distance, thanks to a terrific save on Evan Rodrigues’ one-timer in tight late in the second. The B’s made it count, tying it in the third then hanging on for dear life on the lengthy penalty kill before the OT.
Both teams had good chances to win it in the extra session, but when a loose puck came to Zacha on the right boards in the defensive zone, he went the distance on his off wing, beating Bobrovsky with a sharp wrist shot to the far side to keep the B’s unbeaten in the regulation (8-0-1).
“It was an important win, especially after last year. this game meant a little bit more,” said Zacha. “You want to beat teams like this.”
