After getting embarrassed at home on Thursday night by the Habs, the Bruins traveled to Montreal tonight for the second game of the home-and-home series to take on the Canadiens. Maybe they did not get embarrassed as far as the score (they only lost the game by a score of 2-1), but losing at home to your rival after dominating most of the game is embarrassing for the players, the coaches, and the fans.
Bruins forward Benoit Pouliot was scratched from tonight's game due to an illness. He was replaced by Jordan Caron.
The key was to come out strong for this game. Bruins head coach Claude Julien sent out his fourth line of Gregory Campbell, Daniel Paille, and Shawn Thornton to start the game. I am assuming that he did this just to get his team off to a fast and energetic start. Julien was thinking a bit too optimistically.
Boston fell behind again as Montreal scored two goals in the first period. Brian Gionta scored a power play goal after deflecting a shot by Tomas Plekanec past Tuukka Rask. Lars Eller added the second goal a little over a minute later. Boston has now trailed in every game they have played in this season with the exception of the game against Tampa Bay.
The B's began battling the officials in the second period. Some questionable calls got whistled against Boston where similar calls would not get called against Montreal. With that being said, Canadiens defenseman P.K. Subban suckered both Andrew Ference and Milan Lucic into minor penalties.
David Desharnais capitalized on the Ference penalty by adding another power play goal for the Canadiens. Montreal had five power play opportunities through the first two periods while Boston had zero. They were not disciplined and they seemed pretty content just laying hits on their opposition instead of playing hockey.
Lucic put Boston on the board after a great defensive play by David Krejci forced the turnover to Nathan Horton and he passed the puck over to Lucic for the one-time shot past Carey Price. The Lucic-Krejci-Horton line was reunited in this game in hopes of those three players returning to playoff form.
Rask made some great saves in the third period. On the offensive side of the puck, the Bruins finally got a power play opportunity. However, the only thing they were able to do with it was hit the post. Tyler Seguin scored a late goal for the Bruins after Rask was pulled for the extra attacker.
Tim Thomas came on in relief of Rask for only a few seconds until he was pulled for another attacker. Plekanec added an empty net goal for the Habs as they went on to defeat the Bruins by a score of 4-2.
The fact that they pulled Rask for Thomas in a tight game shows that they have no confidence in the young goaltender. It is not his fault that the Bruins cannot give him any goal support. Right now, the Bruins really miss Marc Savard.
The Bruins will head back home for a Tuesday night divisional game against the Ottawa Senators.
Gold Star: Daniel Paille...Most likely, no one was paying attention to Paille. If you watched him play tonight, he was one of the stronger players for Boston. The recent trade talks have forced him to pick up his game.
Black Star: Andrew Ference...The walk of shame is a terrible feeling for a hockey player. Even though he took dumb penalties, he also did not play a strong game.
No comments:
Post a Comment