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Boston Bruins defenseman Nikita Zadorov (91) is checked into the boards by Los Angeles Kings left wing Jeff Malott during the second period. (AP Photo\/Charles Krupa)<\/p>\nCharlie McAvoy was not in the mood for talking after scoring the overtime game-winner in the Bruins\u2019 2-1 win over the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday at the Garden.<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t being rude and his audience wasn\u2019t about to press him beyond the two questions he allowed the scrum of reporters. His face told the story well enough.<\/p>\n
Every hockey player is nursing bumps and bruises at this time of year but all of McAvoy\u2019s have seemingly been directly to his face. He suffered a broken jaw in November and has taken at least three shots to the mouth that have claimed a number of his lower teeth since then, including in the second period of Tuesday\u2019s game that sent him to the room for the rest of the period.<\/p>\n
But he returned and scored the GWG on a beautiful play.<\/p>\n
After the game, the thought of another trip to the dentist\u2019s chair did not have him in a hero\u2019s mood.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish the hits would stop coming, honestly,\u201d said McAvoy, who had two fat lips and a set of choppers that are starting to look like a Jack-O-Lantern\u2019s. \u201cIt\u2019s tiring. Honestly, my mouth can\u2019t feel worse. But I\u2019ll get some work, we\u2019ve got a really good dentist here that\u2019s great. I\u2019m just really happy we got two points tonight. I didn\u2019t feel great or have my stuff tonight. Just to see it go in at the end, it felt like all\u2019s forgiven. I just need to get some rest and I\u2019ll be better on Thursday and keep this thing going.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis thing\u201d is the B\u2019s home win streak, which is now up to 13 straight games, improving their home record to 25-8-1. They have a chance to stretch it to 14 when former Boston University star Macklin Celebrini and San Jose Sharks come to town on Thursday.<\/p>\n
While McAvoy was not very chipper after the game, coach Marco Sturm, who didn\u2019t expect McAvoy to return after he didn\u2019t make it back in the second period, appreciated the effort and resilience. He also mentioned him in the same breath as a couple of other well-known Bruins war horses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guy next to him, he\u2019s going to look over and (think) \u2018Is he going to battle through it or not?\u2019 If you\u2019re going to sit across from him and you\u2019re a young guy, to see that, I don\u2019t want to be the guy that\u2019s going to quit,\u201d said Sturm. \u201cThose are the guys you need in the locker room. He\u2019s a good example and we have some other guys, too, that are a great example for our young guys. We always talk about the Charas and the Bergerons, they set the tone. And I think Charlie took over and he\u2019s just passing it along. It\u2019s what we do and I think it\u2019s really important.\u201d<\/p>\n
McAvoy scored 39 seconds into overtime to lift the B\u2019s to win the game that felt at times like a tug of war. In OT, Mark Kastelic grabbed control of the puck at the side of his own net, wheeled behind it and sent a pass along the boards from behind his goal line to David Pastrnak at the LA blue line. Staying just onside, Pastrnak dished to an onrushing McAvoy, who attacked the net with speed and tucked a backhander past Darcy Kuemper for the win.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s tough as nails, man,\u201d said Jeremy Swayman of McAvoy. \u201cYou always know he\u2019s going to respond to whatever comes his way. That\u2019s a special individual. I\u2019m so happy he\u2019s getting the success he deserves right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swayman only made 14 saves but he stopped two clean breakaways and several tough deflections to earn his 25th win of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an honor. It\u2019s hard to win in this league and it takes a team. A lot of credit goes to the boys in front of me. I love this thing ,so let\u2019s keep it rolling,\u201d said Swayman.<\/p>\n
Mason Lohrei broke a scoreless tie at 8:22 of the third period. After Swayman made a great pad save on an Alex Laferriere redirection, the B\u2019s went on the attack. Lohrei found some open space, which was hard to come by all night, and he stepped down from the right point. He placed a perfect shot over Kuemper\u2019s blocker, off the post and in.<\/p>\n
But the B\u2019s couldn\u2019t hold the lead. LA tied it at 14:00 when Trevor Moore pulled up along the right boards to elude a Lohrei check and dished it back to an oncoming Drew Doughty. The veteran\u2019s blistering slapper was going wide to the far side but it hit off Elias Lindholm\u2019s leg and into the net.<\/p>\n
That would send it to OT, where the B\u2019s grabbed the all-important two points.<\/p>\n
The first period set the tone for the contest to be a grind of a game. Every puck was contested and the teams wore out the neutral zone as they both struggled to get any offensive flow going. Seam passes were not getting through to their intended target.<\/p>\n
It felt a little like a playoff game, but not a particularly pretty one. Crisp it was not.<\/p>\n
\u201cI looked up at one time and I think they were at nine shots at one point. That shows me we played the right way. And it\u2019s the way we have to play,\u201d said Sturm. \u201cI\u2019m trying to explain to the guys, this is playoff hockey, right here. From now on, it\u2019s going to be that way for the whole month. It\u2019s good for us to see how you have to play in those kind of games.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boston Bruins defenseman Nikita Zadorov (91) is checked into the boards by Los Angeles Kings left wing Jeff Malott during the second period. (AP Photo\/Charles Krupa)<\/p>\n
The Kings, who had a 5-3 advantage in shots in the first, got the first excellent chance of the game when dangerous goal scorer Adrian Kempe took advantage of a bobble at the LA blue line. He pulled away for a clean breakaway but Swayman made the stop.<\/p>\n
One of the three Bruins shots was a tester when Pastrnak sent Marat Khusnutdinov in on a short break-in but he didn\u2019t have much room to make a move and Kuemper gobbled it up.<\/p>\n
Mikey Eyssimont also came up with a big block on Scott Laughton, who had a good part of the net at which to shoot.<\/p>\n
The B\u2019s got the first power play of the game when Kastelic was interfered with, but McAvoy had to take a tripping penalty 43 seconds into it to wipe out the advantage.<\/p>\n
The B\u2019s got their second power play midway through the second and it was a rough one for Hampus Lindholm. First, he was loading up for a snap shot off the first faceoff but whiffed on it, giving Laughton a clean breakaway.<\/p>\n
But he couldn\u2019t beat Swayman, who got a pad on Laughton\u2019s shot. Then, after the B\u2019s repeatedly turned it over in their zone, Lindholm wiped out the final 26 seconds of the PP with a hooking call that may have saved a goal as the puck was laying behind Swayman in the crease.<\/p>\n
Things got nasty when Samuel Helenius got McAvoy with a hit to the mouth with 6:35 left in the second. He would skate off and head down the tunnel while Nikita Zadorov chose to avenge the hit by dropping the gloves with Helenius. The 6-7 Zadorov and 6-6 Helenius did a decent job of keeping each other at bat with their long reaches, though they kept swinging away before the linesmen stepped in.<\/p>\n
Pastrnak drew an interference penalty late in the second and they had better zone time but they couldn\u2019t beat Kuemper. Fraser Minten, who had hit a post in the first period, clanged the crossbar on a redirect just as a power play had expired and the sides went into the third in a 0-0 deadlock.<\/p>\n
The teams traded goals in the third before McAvoy and his aching mouth sent everyone home happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charlie McAvoy was not in the mood for talking after scoring the overtime game-winner in the Bruins\u2019 2-1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5126],"tags":[530,2154,5,186,1760,240,5303,793,145,5304,5302,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-497795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-kings","8":"tag-bruins","9":"tag-charlie-mcavoy","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-kings","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-la-kings","14":"tag-lakings","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-los-angeles-kings","17":"tag-losangeles","18":"tag-losangeleskings","19":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116209402505944453","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497795","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=497795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}