The Bruins decided to give their fans a break by playing an enormously entertaining and hilarious little game that ended in a shutout win!
After all that emotional turmoil from the Trade Deadline, this was just what the doctor ordered.
1st Period
Not a whole lot of scoring, but Mark Kastelic had himself a little donnybrook with Emil Lilleberg, real heavyweight contest between the 6’3+ players.
After that? Onto the scoring!
2nd Period
To open the scoring, Cole Koepke was able to pick Nick Perbix’s pocket and bring the puck to the net. Just about everybody on the Lightning loses Vinni Lettieri as he charges the net, and so OIiver Bjorkstrand basically passes the puck to Lettieri, who gets in a little scrum with Bjorkstrand and the confusion leads to a goal!
Koepke gets credit for this, but it could’ve been him or Bjorkstrand or even Vasilevskiy’s movement that caused it to go in. Strange sequence with a fantastic result!
Scoring concludes for the 2nd, and we head to the 3rd period!
3rd Period
For your 200th NHL game, you probably want to make it an interesting one. Now you’re a certified vet. You need to establish that you got to these games by being one of the very best in the world and for a good long time. You need to make it clear that you deserve a certain amount of respect when you’re on the ice. So what are your options? Well, you could fight, but he’s already done that and you kind of expect that for a vet, vets have been in fights before. You could score, that’s always fun! But that’s both A) hard, and B) also expected of you. The only way you can make the scoring interesting in your 200th game is if you do a lot of it…or if you do it from distance.
Yeah, that’ll work. Mark Kastelic from downtown makes it 2-0 Bruins!
As the period wound down and Tampa got desperate, they pulled their goalie within the last five minutes, but as their shambolic performance in puck security showed, that was not an ideal situation for them to be in, and it gave Nikita Zadorov the runway he needed to add to the lead with an empty netter! 3-0 Bruins!
And that should wrap things up, just gotta kill some clock here, and oh! you know what we almost forgot? David Pastrnak nor newcomer Casey Mittelstadt have a point yet. How’s about you two go ahead and spring Cole Koepke for another tally, sound good?
Awesome work, and efficient too! Thanks boys, good luck on Tuesday.
Bruins win in a 4-0 shutout!
Game Notes
- Your TOI Leader was Mason Lohrei, who logged 23:54!
- The Bruins were moving out there with a lot more verve and speed than we’ve seen in a good long time. Part of that I’d imagine is that a number of players here are now freed from the expectation of making the playoffs, and so can play a little more loosely and just focus on the game in front of them. The other is the new faces, some of whom would very much like to impress upon the league that they belong.
- This game was hilarious. Almost every scoring play felt like a comedy of errors for Tampa. Boston scored exclusively in ways to get you to go “wait, what!?”. Frankly, after all the nonsense this squad has seen over the last four months, it was much needed. Thank you for the belly laugh, B’s.
- Zadorov-Jokiharju actually came out of this game with the highest impact of any pairing. I know the returns are very early on this, but that’s something worth considering for the future. Let’s keep an eye on these two.
- Casey Mittelstadt sure can skate, can’t he? It’s a welcome change of pace these days for a top 6 forward who isn’t Pasta to actually be able to skate with anything resembling speed this season. He finished his night with an assist; good on him for getting his first Bruins point out of the way so he can really start to work!
- Mark Kastelic joins a very select group of NHL players who have scored from the neutral zone with the goalie in net. Guys like Nik Lidstrom, Fedor Tyutin, Ryan O’Reilly, Matt Niskanen, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Dustin Byfuglien, Barrett Jackman, Derek Morris, and John Klingberg have all that that unique honor, and now we get to add Kastelic to the “Hey, you never know” club. Happy 200th game indeed!
- Lauko and Khusnutdinov were definitely Okay! Both are definitely depth guys and that’s fine.
- Pastrnak’s on another point streak! This time on a real nifty assist on Koepke’s second tally.
- Swayman with the shutout! I feel like it should go without saying that he’s desperately needed a game like this over the last few games, and it’s nice to see him pull one together.
The Bruins will stay on the road, as they go up against the Florida Panthers…and presumably former captain Brad Marchand up on Level Nine, on Tuesday night. That game is at 7pm EST.
We’ll see you there!