Cole Caufield served notice that Team USA made a grave mistake leaving him off the Olympic team, but Morgan Geekie\u2019s deuce trumped the brilliant Montreal Canadiens forward\u2019s hat trick in the Bruins\u2019 thrilling come-from-behind 4-3 win at TD Garden on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
The previously slumping Geekie scored two goals, including the game-winner late in the third period, a shot that was hammered so hard that no one saw the puck go in the net, until Geekie raced down and pointed to where the puck was lodged.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just saw (Elias Lindholm) looking up in the air so I wasn\u2019t quite sure, either, but I saw a little black thing in the net and I figured the camera didn\u2019t go that far over. So I hoped for the best. I\u2019m glad I was right,\u201d said Geekie.<\/p>\n
That little black thing had not been Geekie\u2019s friend for several of weeks. He snapped a 12-game goal streak on Tuesday in Dallas, but that was a meaningless goal in the blowout loss, and a tip at that. The GWG on Saturday announced the return of the player we had seen throughout the calendar year of 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery player is going to go through this sometimes and that\u2019s just part of the experience that I\u201dve been through many times in my career,\u201d said David Pastrnak, who set up Geekie\u2019s first goal on a sublimely creative play. \u201cHe was definitely around it already in the last four or five games\u2026Sometimes that\u2019s just the way it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
At times it looked like the speedy Habs might win this one going away, but the B\u2019s scored three power-play goals, including Geekie\u2019s game-winner. The win pulled the B\u2019s to within a point of the Habs in the Atlantic Division standings.<\/p>\n
It was the first time this year the Bruins, trailing 3-2 after 40 minutes, came back from a deficit after the second period in 18 tries.<\/p>\n
The game had a much quieter start than the first two meetings between the teams, both of which began with fisticuffs right off the bat.<\/p>\n
Maybe the B\u2019s should have started something right away because the Habs were much sharper in the opening period and they took the first lead of the game at 6:36.<\/p>\n
Facing four Bruins defenders at the top of the Boston zone, Caufield slipped through the fence to get behind without the puck after defenseman Mike Matheson gained the blue line. Matheson flipped a pass just off the ice that eluded Jonathan Aspirot\u2019s reach and landed on the stick of Caufield, whose quick snap shot beat Jeremy Swayman high to the glove side.<\/p>\n
The B\u2019s were outshot 7-2 in the first period and the Habs did in fact play very well defensively, beating the Bruins to loose pucks and killing plays before they had a chance to grow into anything dangerous.<\/p>\n
But the B\u2019s had more chances than those that showed up on the shot clock. Geekie, who had one goal in 14 games, fanned on two glorious one-time attempts on the only power play in the period. Pavel Zacha also heeled a good one-time chance.<\/p>\n
And in the final minute of the period, Pastrnak cruised through the slot and ripped a shot that many thought went in \u2013 the goal horn sounded and the crowd erupted \u2013 but it only clanged the post.<\/p>\n
There was one fight that happened organically when Aspirot dropped the gloves with Kirby Dach after a net-front battle. The B\u2019s needed a little more of that. They were down only a goal, but they had a lot of work to do to get their play up to the level of Montreal\u2019s. It took them almost all 40 minutes, but the B\u2019s did indeed respond.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew they were going to respond but (the first period) was not good, for some reason. It was very quiet, no energy, we made some really bad mistakes,\u201d said coach Marco Sturm. \u201cIt was a good response after that for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The refs threw the B\u2019s a lifeline when they called a marginal interference on Noah Dobson on Casey Mittelstadt just 25 seconds into the second period.<\/p>\n
The first power-play unit was all over the Habs but Sam Montembeault made a couple of quality saves until the second unit cashed in. Fraser Minten made a terrific backdoor pass to Viktor Arvidsson (12), who was stopped by Montembeault on his first shot but the veteran stuck with it and scored on the follow at 1:45.<\/p>\n
But the B\u2019s looked the gift horse in the mouth. After Arvidsson\u2019s backhander nearly gave the B\u2019s the unlikely lead, the Habs were breaking the puck out when Zacha took a bad offensive zone penalty.<\/p>\n
On the advantage, Caufield took a Nick Suzuki feed at the bottom of the left circle and beat Swayman with the tough-angle shot with Swayman down at 7:37.<\/p>\n
The Habs decided to keep the B\u2019s in this one. Kaiden Guhle clipped Sean Kuraly with a high stick \u2013 this one a no-doubter \u2013 and the B\u2019s went back on the PP.<\/p>\n
This time they cashed in on a terrific play by Pastrnak. After Matheson\u2019s shorthanded bid was turned away, Charlie McAvoy zipped the puck up to Pastrnak on the left side. On the attack, Pastrnak flipped the puck in the air on a self-pass to his forehand. With the recovering Montreal defenders chasing Pastrnak, the superstar passed it back to Geekie (27) for the open-net equalizer at 9:46.<\/p>\n
The deadlock did not last long. Pastrnak was covering on defense on a Montreal dump-in, slipped down and got up in time to interfere with Jake Evans. And Caufield scored from almost the same spot he scored his second goal. This time it looked like Swayman had everything covered except the smallest of slots by his ear. Caufield found it and he had a hat trick at 13:29 of the second.<\/p>\n
Then came a major scare. Nikita Zadorov had just pushed the puck up along the boards and Zach Bolduc finished his check on him. Zadorov went airborne and when he came down, the blade of is right skate planted and with most of his 255 pounds coming down, the knee torqued in a concerning way. Zadorov stayed down on the ice and needed some assistance as he skated ever so gingerly off the ice.<\/p>\n
But when the third period began, Zadorov was surprisingly back on the ice. He gutted it out but labored. Time will tell if it lingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was actually really surprised when our trainer came and said \u2018Yeah, he\u2019s going to try it,’\u201d said Sturm. \u201cIt shows a lot, too, that he came back and he was not 100 percent. I think we could all see that. But he was out there and battling hard for the guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Zadorov return proved to be inspirational.<\/p>\n
With the Habs in lead\u2013protection mode a little too early, the B\u2019s kept at it in the third until they tied it with 6:05 remaining in regulation. Minten\u2019s pass intended for a rushing Geekie down the slot did not connect, but Minten (13) followed it up and beat Montembeault on a backhander.<\/p>\n
Then, after Alexandre Texier took a holding penalty on Tanner Jeannot off the ensuing faceoff, the B\u2019s took their first lead of the game with 5:50 left \u2014 though only Geekie knew it at first. The sniper, who had been so cold for so long, ripped a slap shot that was such a bullet that no one saw it go past Montembeault. Everyone assumed it deflected out of play, everyone except Geekie, who skated down and pointed to where it was lodged behind the camera in the net. Quite a way to score the 100th goal of your career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly thought the goalie had it under his pads,\u201d said Pastrnak.<\/p>\n
Nope, it was in the net. And all of a sudden, the B\u2019s had a lead to protect.<\/p>\n
The Habs pulled Montembeault with 2:02 left in regulation and, though the B\u2019s iced the puck twice, they won battle after battle to nail down the two points and deny the Habs any.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cole Caufield served notice that Team USA made a grave mistake leaving him off the Olympic team, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5103],"tags":[95,265,5,264,21,5147,4261,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-426747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal-canadiens","8":"tag-boston-bruins","9":"tag-canadiens","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-montreal","12":"tag-montreal-canadiens","13":"tag-montrealcanadiens","14":"tag-morgan-geekie","15":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115953775709886943","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}