The Boston Bruins came out empty-handed out of their last game before a lengthy break. The New York Rangers had 12 points less than the Bruins coming into the game at TD Garden on Saturday night. However, they were able to prevail and get a very important road win.
The Bruins mourn a very unfortunate first period. They hadn’t been able to convert on any of their three power-play chances, although Danton Heinen scored the opening goal off a nice feed from Jakob Forsbacka-Karlsson. Despite the Bruins efforts in the first period, the Rangers tied it up almost immediately and gave the B’s the feeling, that it’s not going to be easy to top them.
Filip Chytil scored a game-tying goal, his ninth on the season, and in the follow-up, Chytil crashed into Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask after a slight push from Charlie McAvoy. Rask needed to go down the tunnel and never returned to the game. Boston Bruins later announced that Rask was diagnosed with a concussion. Bruins fans hope that it won’t affect Rask long-termly, as we have seen similar cases with great goalies around the NHL like Carey Price or most notably Corey Crawford.
From this moment it was up to Jaroslav Halak to protect the net for the Bruins. The Rangers scored go-ahead goal early in the second frame and it seemed like Mika Zibanejad’s deflection surprised the Bruins net-minder. That was a soft one on Halak and the Bruins were once again down by a goal. That was the sixth game in a row in which Boston trailed in the game.
The Bruins stepped on the accelerator to try and even up the score, but Henrik Lundqvist was spectacular in goal for the visitors from New York. Nonetheless, the Bruins tied the game early into the third period with Brad Marchand burying a nice pass from David Pastrnak. Later on, the Rangers went on the power play with Zdeno Chara throwing the puck out of play, and they capitalized on it for an eventual game-winner. It was a second goal of the game for Zibanejad, who rifled one in through the screen provided by Chris Kreider in front of the helpless Jaroslav Halak.
It was quite a miserable week for the Bruins. In each of their four games, the Bruins scored first and despite that advantage, Boston was able to get just three points out of eight available. Starting with a loss against the Washington Capitals last week, the Bruins always appear to give up their lead very shortly after they score. It has cost them every single time out on the ice.
Now a 10-day break featuring the bye-week and the All-Star break will follow as the Bruins will have to chance to rest up and regroup. They will also hope that Tuukka Rask will be healthy sooner rather than later because he has been in tremendous form as of late. Boston also hopes that this sequence of last four games will not be repeated.
Way too many power-play opportunities wasted, every single time a lead squandered and many shots required to beat goaltenders of their opponents. The Bruins had 141 shots on goal in those last four games last week, that’s nearly 35 shots on goal per game. Just 12 of those shots went to the net, which is only 8.5% of them. On the other side, the Bruins faced 92 shots on goal in this sequence, outshooting their opposition by almost 50 shots in total. Nevertheless, they won the only game that their opponent ended a game having an advantage on the shot clock.
