Game 65: It Had To End Sooner Or Later

Yes that is right. The Bruins fell to the Pittsburgh Penguins tonight in overtime by a final score of 3-2. Patrice Bergeron was out of the line up tonight due to personal reasons, but he is scheduled to be back in the line up on Tuesday against the Canadiens. Steve Kampfer was also out tonight with a mild concussion and he is scheduled to miss a week.

With the B's blue line looking a little thin right now, Boston had to call up Matt Bartkowski from Providence. This is his third game up with the Bruins this season and all three of come against the Penguins. The defensive pairings tonight play very solid. It was the lack of offense that was the problem for Boston tonight.

The first period was a scoreless one in the goals column, but not so much in the penalty minutes column. Two fights occurred in the first period (Shawn Thornton vs. Mike Rupp and Nathan Horton vs. Craig Adams), hoping to generate some energy for some goal scoring to take place, but that did not happen in the first period.

Zdeno Chara (BOS) got things going in the second period when he scored his 11th of the season. That lead was short lived however when Jordan Staal and Dustin Jeffrey from Pittsburgh scored within 70 seconds of each other to put the Penguins on top 2-1. It was not until late in the third period where David Krejci popped in the game-tying goal after some great triangle movement of the puck with Milan Lucic and Nathan Horton.

The game was sent to overtime when Jeffrey (PIT) scored his second of the game as he snuck a puck under Tim Thomas (BOS) to win the game. The deciding factor in this game was the take-aways. The Penguins led the Bruins in take-aways for the game 13-9. When you take the puck away from the opposing team and create turnovers, you will win the game.

Gold Star: David Krejci (1 goal, 1 assist, +1 rating, 5 shots on goal, 2 hits, 1 take-away, 47% face offs won)

Black Star: Michael Ryder...maybe playing without Rich Peverley affected his play tonight since Peverley had to center the second line in Bergeron's absence. He had a -2 rating for the night and forced Dennis Seidenberg to make a tough pass which caused a turnover and led to the winning goal in overtime.