The Bruins did not have nearly enough to show for what was a dominant second-period effort against the Lightning at Tampa’s Benchmark International Arena. <\/p>\n
On the board with 11 shots, and surrendering just five at the other end, the Bruins had just one goal to show for their efforts. The goal, of course, came from their second line behind a great Viktor Arvidsson dish to Casey Mittelstadt. But, again, the Bruins should’ve had more than just a 1-0 lead to show for that frame. <\/p>\n
And came back to bite them, as the Lightning returned the favor with a dominant, three-goal performance in the third period en route to a 3-1 victory. <\/p>\n
The loss also marked the first time this season that the Bruins dropped a game in regulation when leading after 40 minutes, dropping to 31-1-4 on the season. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tampa’s third-period push began when Charle-Edouard D’Astous activated down low and put home a second-chance opportunity knot things up at the 2:13 mark of the third. And as the Bruins struggled to get anything going on the Bolts’ Andrei Vasilevskiy, Tampa defenseman Darren Raddysh took advantage of the Bruins’ inability to get the puck in deep. Storming down into the offensive zone, Raddysh fired and banked a shot off Jeremy Swayman and in to give the Bolts their first lead of the evening with just 5:31 remaining in regulation. <\/p>\n
At the time of the Raddysh go-ahead goal, the Bruins had just one shot in the third period. And the Bruins were only able to muster two more between Raddysh’s go-ahead goal and Nikita Kucherov’s empty-net dagger, giving them a paltry three shots in the third period of play. That’ll never be enough to win in Tampa. <\/p>\n
Boston’s power play once again failed to make any sort of imprint on this game, and went 0-for-4 by the day’s end. The Black and Gold power play continues to be their greatest flaw in regulation losses post-Olympic break, with the man advantage having gone 2-for-20 in the club’s last six regulation losses. <\/p>\n
The Bruins did make two lineup changes in this game, as Mikey Eyssimont subbed in for Lukas Reichel on Boston’s third line, while Jordan Harris drew into the mix for Henri Jokiharju after a horrific showing in Florida on Thursday. Eyssimont, who skated on Boston’s third line, finished with three shots in 12 minutes of time on ice. Harris, meanwhile, had two shots in 14:14 of action on the B’s backend. <\/p>\n
It’s only going to get harder before it gets easier for the Bruins, too, as they will now head to Philadelphia for a Sunday matinee against the rested Flyers. <\/p>\n
The Flyers, who are still alive in the playoff race with 88 points, come into Sunday’s showdown with the Black and Gold as winners in seven of their last 10 games. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bruins did not have nearly enough to show for what was a dominant second-period effort against the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5105],"tags":[95,5,189,4,540,92,5168,5167],"class_list":{"0":"post-541226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-lightning","8":"tag-boston-bruins","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-lightning","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-tampa-bay","13":"tag-tampa-bay-lightning","14":"tag-tampabay","15":"tag-tampabaylightning"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116349382495586183","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541226","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=541226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}