It really shouldn\u2019t come as a major surprise at this point, but the Boston Bruins continue to clearly demonstrate they have \u201cthe stuff\u201d to be a playoff team this spring.<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen how it\u2019s going to play out for them and Tuesday night\u2019s home loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs was as unimpressive as it gets for the Black and Gold, but it was more than offset by the B\u2019s shaking off some third period troubles to knock off the Sabres in overtime in a 4-3 comeback road victory at the KeyBank Center on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
The win allowed the B\u2019s to open up a three-point cushion on the top wild card playoff spot and pulled them into a tie with the Montreal Canadiens for the third playoff spot in the Atlantic Division, though the Habs hold two games in hand on the Black and Gold entering Thursday.<\/p>\n
It was a gutsy \u201cW\u201d for the Bruins, and a super vital character check on the second night of a back-to-back following a really \u201cembarrassing\u201d home loss in the team\u2019s own words.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m proud of the game and the way we answered after [the loss to Toronto]. We played a heck of a team that\u2019s rolling pretty good,\u201d said David Pastrnak, who finished with three points and a plus-3 in a superstar effort on the ice. \u201cA little slow start, we went into the third and they\u2019re a good team and they obviously came hard and scored shorthanded. That can\u2019t happen. But credit to our group for sticking with it and we get the tying goal, and no matter how long it takes we stick with it for a huge two points.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a funny thing with this Bruins team, as many prognosticators, fans, and followers have been almost anxiously waiting for the bottom to drop out for this group of hockey players, and at every turn, they simply do not let it happen. On Wednesday night, there was a horrendous sequence in the third period for Mason Lohrei where he was burnt by Zach Benson\u00a0for a shorthanded goal after losing a 1-on-1 battle, and then foolishly took a cross-checking penalty in a fit of pique after Benson scored the tying goal.<\/p>\n
Jason Zucker finished on the ensuing power play to stun the Bruins with two Buffalo goals in the span of 33 seconds to take the lead in the third period, and many assumed the B\u2019s were cooked at that point.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Lohrei] knows he messed up and he needs to get the job done. He\u2019s got to learn the hard way. He\u2019s been pretty damn good all year long,\u201d said\u00a0Marco Sturm. \u201cHe had a tough start and the last three or four games [have been a little off], so now we need to make sure he gets back on track. But mistakes happen and that\u2019s why you have teammates that bail you out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just a great [team] effort. We\u2019re very happy to grab those two points. Huge points, but I liked the response [in the third period] even better. I still believe that we deserved to win [that one].\u201d<\/p>\n
As it\u2019s been on many nights for the Bruins this season, it was a pair of second-line forwards that stepped up when the team needed a play. Casey Mittelstadt scored his 14th goal of the season to tie things up after a Jonathan Aspirot point blast wildly caromed off the end boards to a waiting Mittelstadt at the front of the net.<\/p>\n
That set things up for overtime, where\u00a0Pavel Zacha\u00a0won the opening faceoff, and the Bruins trio of Zacha,\u00a0David Pastrnak,\u00a0and\u00a0Charlie McAvoy never lost possession of the puck while patiently reloading out of the offensive zone until they got the exact entry they were looking for.<\/p>\n
Pastrnak fed Zacha speeding in on the wing, and he beat\u00a0Ukko Pekka-Luukkonen\u00a0five-hole for the game-winning score and his career-best 24th score of the season, a game-winner that vaulted their playoff percentage chances into the 70-plus percent mark.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew how important this game was and we just kept coming,\u201d said Zacha. \u201cWe just<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It really shouldn\u2019t come as a major surprise at this point, but the Boston Bruins continue to clearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,5,4,46049,46050],"class_list":{"0":"post-524064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-boston-bruins","10":"tag-bostonbruins","11":"tag-bruins","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-top-bruins","15":"tag-top-story-2"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116296420407656980","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524064","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=524064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}