The Bruins didn’t have their best effort Friday afternoon, but they were able to turn it on long enough to pick up two points and extend their win streak to six games.
As head coach Bruce Cassidy was unhappy with the overall team effort and certain individual efforts, he and Brad Marchand were unhappy with the way Marchand was pulled from the game at the start of the third period.
Marchand came up a bit shaken up after body contact with Jacob Trouba in the Rangers zone. He wasn’t pulled from the game immediately, nor was he looked at during the second intermission.
It wasn’t till after his first shift of the third period when the spotter called down for Marchand to be looked at. A frustrated Marchand snapped his stick in half off the boards, and tossed the top half down the runway as he left the Bruins bench.
"That’s embarrassing, they had 30 minutes, or 20 minutes to sit there, view the tape and call it in. But they make me come out in a 2-1 game, as we’re starting to gain momentum,” Marchand said following the contest.
“To do that, guy is up there busy eating pizza and cheeseburgers and can’t watch the game. Maybe next time he can pull his head out of his butt and watch the game.”
Player safety is always the number one concern of the league and the concussion spotters. And sure, maybe it was Marchand’s first shift of the third period that first caused concern. But it was pretty clear from Marchand’s reaction to his collision with Trouba that he should have been pulled right there and then.
“This game’s on NBC. He gets hit at the end of the second period, and then they pull him at the
start of the third. To me it’s, we’re trying to market our best players; I thought it was fairly evident when he was hit, and then they decide to do it at the start of the third. That’s the only explanation I got,” Cassidy said.
“I don’t know why they wouldn’t do it in between periods; there is an 18-minute intermission.
But, yes, to answer your question, he was. He checked out fine. It’s a little frustrating for him especially when it happened at the end of the second period, so I didn’t like the timing of it at all.”
When players are pulled off the ice by the concussion spotter, the quiet room is their destination as they are required to pass as series of tests before returning to game action.
But the quiet room wasn’t so quiet after David Pastrnak’s league leading 24th goal tied the game at two.
“Yeah I heard it, so that was nice,” Marchand said of hearing the crowd’s reaction to Pastrnak’s goal. “It was a good feeling but you want to be out there with the guys, not sitting in the back room when you shouldn’t be.”
After falling into a two-goal deficit thanks to some sloppiness in all three zones, the Bruins found some energy after a Charlie McAvoy fight with Brendan Smith and a massive penalty kill that saw Rangers with 58 seconds of five-on-three power play time after the Bruins took back-to-back penalties in succession.
“We didn’t have the energy level we needed to tonight to start. At some point, your energy to get started is a little tougher to manufacture maybe than other teams. So that helped in that regard,” Cassidy said of McAvoy dropping the gloves.
“Probably the difference, at the end of the day. Well, all of the kills, to be honest with you,” Cassidy said about the Bruins going 6-6 on the penalty kill. “We had enough of them, again tonight. I thought we did a real good job of dictating where the shots were going to come from, and were able to get the clears once they did get their shot from the middle.”
After Pastrnak’s tying tally, the Rangers had a golden opportunity to regain the lead after Par Lindholm was given a double minor for high sticking 12:58 into the third period.
The play was not originally called a penalty, but after a quick chat amongst the officials, Lindholm was sent to the box.
It was another call that left Cassidy scratching his head.
“Clearly the high stick — there was no call on the ice, that’s frustrating. We were told they can only review [penalty] calls, and then there is a call [made after the fact],” Cassidy added.
After the Bruins big four-minute penalty kill, both teams traded chances, looking to snag a victory in regulation. When both teams failed to do so, to overtime they headed.
If the Bruins are to be victorious in overtime, chances are it was Torey Krug racing down the middle of the ice, or Marchand adding to his legacy as one of the best overtime heroes this game has seen, or even some offensive zone magic between Pastrnak and David Krejci.
This time, it was that Czech offensive zone magic.
“Once he got around, I think it was [Pavel] Buchnevich, then it was a matter of, is he going to shoot, is he attacking, is he in the clear,” Cassidy said. “If not, I think he knows where Krech is going to go. That’s where the relationship for those two comes in, where to throw it to on the ice because he had a pretty good idea of who was coming late.
The win was the Bruins sixth in a row as they remain as the only team in all of the NHL without a regulation loss at home.
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