Bruins Gag On Gulf, Head Home Tied After Lackluster 4-2 Loss
“Hey Macarena!”
Last night in Game 2 down in Tampa, the Lightning came out desperate and the Bruins? Well, they came out. The Bs didn’t land their first shot on goal until 14+ minutes into the game and were being completely outplayed by a team looking to avoid going down 0-2. Yanni Gourde finally broke through on the power play 11:47 in after Torey Krug was whistled for an alleged slashing.
Sonny Corleone: #HockeyGuy
But thanks to some stellar saves from Tuukka Rask and a much more active Charlie McAvoy’s first career playoff goal, the Bs somehow escaped the first tied at one (though they did blow a 1:45 gift 5-on-3, one thanks to a chintzy-ass roughing call on Tyler Johnson). The Bs have had some beautiful dishes this post-season and Patrice Bergeron added another here.
Johnson scored the lone goal of the second period when he beat Rask on a weird play I’ve watched 40 times from every angle and I’m still not sure what transpired.
Why Pee took at shot at it.
Gotta take the good with the bad but this was one of a handful of bad turnovers by David Pastrnak on the night.
Advertisement
More like egg noodles and ketchup.
Regaaaaadliss, 2-1 Tampa Bay. But then the dagger came via another yuck top line turnover (combined 0-4–4) . Love ya, Brad. But what the fuck was this?
A nice shot by Ondrej Palat? Sure. Would I have also liked to see a save there? Hell yeah. That goal was a back-breaker, plain and simple. Of course, killing a phantom penalty for four minutes before that didn’t help either but I digress.
Less than two minutes later, Andrei Vasilevskiy gave up an atrocious goal to the red-hot Krug and made things interesting again.
The Bs did have a golden chance to tie it and…
But the Bs couldn’t get the equalizer and Brayden Point, who had a fantastic game, finished them off with an ENG with 26 seconds left. Thoughts of a 2-0 lead going home disappeared as quick as the puck in the O-zone. Yet it’s not all bad.
Advertisement
The Bruins, outshot 31-20, had no business winning last night and still nearly pulled it off. They’re flying home with a split against the top team in the conference and will be hosting the standard Garden madhouse tomorrow night. I’m sure they’d have taken that if asked at the start of the series.
A few more buds for your May Day bowl…
*Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov combined for just three shots and a -1. Kucherov was stoned on a great bid in the third and that was about all the two managed offensively. Unfortunately for the Bs, Tampa has pretty solid depth and beat them with that.
*Patrice Bergeron, among others, is getting tossed out of dots at a pretty frequent clip. Are the linesmen going full no-tolerance so all the little tricks don’t work anymore? Taking no lip? I don’t know what it is but it’s annoying as hell. Just drop the fucking thing like you did for the last century and get outta the way.
*Jeremy Roenick went off on the referees last night on NBCSN’s post-game show (even Pierre Maguire referred to a couple calls as “marginal”, which is diplomatic-on-TV for “horseshit”). That’s pretty damn strong from the league’s network partner.
*The clip cut out on Mike Milbury but he concurred with Roenick. And they didn’t even show this one…
Advertisement
*No, the Bruins didn’t lose because of the refs, they lost because they got zero goals from forwards who were also sloppy with the puck. At the same time, awful reffing really affected the trajectory of the game. It simply needs to be better for every game, team, and fanbase. I know the stripes are human beings and good guys working a thankless job. But something is amiss and the league needs to fix it—whatever it is.
*And this? This was just disgusting.