Bruins win ninth straight on the road; Smith pots game winner in shootout

There are not too many rivalries in the history of sports that are as bruised and bloody as the one between the Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers, conjuring images of the mid-70's clashes when nicknames were cool...

...so when the "Big Bad Bruins" invaded the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon, there was every chance that the "Broad Street Bullies" were going to be less-than-hospitable hosts - and they were, coming out looking to nail anything in white, black and gold that moved, delivering shot after shot on the newly crowned Atlantic Division champs.

And to have the kings down is one thing, but to put them away is quite another - and if there is anything that the other 29 teams in the National Hockey League should have learned by now, it is if you don't put the Bruins away while delivering your best shot early, chances are the Bruins are probably going to put you away late...

...and it took a bit of free hockey and both Boston's Tuukka Rask and Philadelphia's Steve Mason engaging in three-ring acrobatics between the pipes, but Riley Smith ended it as the fifth option in the shootout to give the Bruins their ninth consecutive road victory by a score of 4-3.

Trailing 2-1 coming out of the room for the second period, the Bruins took control of the pace of the game when Brad Marchand almost single-handedly disrupted and killed a Flyers power play and nearly built on his league-leading short-handed goal total, but left the scoring up to his linemates...

...the top defensive pairing of Andrej Meszaros and Zdeno Chara each potting goals and top line centerman Patrice Bergeron continued his hot scoring streak as the Bruins followed their season-long script of absorbing their opponent's best shot, but the Flyers final relentless desperation assault paid off for them as Vincent Lacavalier scored with 24.1 seconds left in regulation to send the game to overtime.

Rask was in full condor mode - by necessity, as the Flyers used him for target practice early then desperately threw everything on net late - stoning all but three of the 52 Philadelphia tries, Lacavalier driving one off off the stick of Bruins' defenseman Johnny Boychuk for the 400th of his career, then the open-net equalizer in the third for number 401 - and blue liner Kimmo Timonen logging his 4th of the season.

Mason wasn't nearly as busy as his counterpart for the Bruins, facing "only" thirty shots in regulation and overtime, but gave up shootout goals to Bergeron and Smith to take the loss.  The point earned for taking the Bruins to overtime forged a tie for second place in the Metropolitan Division with the New York Rangers, the Flyers with the advantage by having a game in hand over their bitter rivals.

Lacavalier gave the Flyers a 1-0 lead just five minutes in, Adam Hall picking the pocket of Bruins' centerman Gregory Campbell in the neutral zone and feeding Lacavalier in the high slot, Boychuk's attempt at blocking the shot causing the puck to dive on Rask, who was handcuffed by the redirection - but Meszaros got it back midway through the period to tie the score...

...Marchand's centering feed and Smith's shielding work in the crease key elements of the scoring play, though the Flyers would retake the lead with 42 seconds remaining in the period, Jakub Voracek dropping a pass to Timonen from the right wing on a 3-2 break, Timonen needing no redirection on his blistering wrister from the high slot.

The first power play opportunity of the game went to the Flyers, but Marchand was masterful in leading a penalty kill effort that nearly netted his sixth short-handed goal of the season - but the Bruins had to settle for the shift in momentum gained by the kill, then embarking on a man-advantage of their own, Chara potting his tally just eleven seconds into the power play to level the score at 2-2...

...Jarome Iginla easily finding Chara uncovered to Mason's blocker side, the gigantic blue liner using his incredible wingspan to elevate the puck on the backhand over Mason's trapper - then Bergeron gave Boston the lead on a fantastic individual effort, putting a shot on Mason from the top of the right circle and then beating Timonen to the rebound and negaotiating the trapezoid before turning and spinning to the forehand in the bottom of the left circle to beat Mason stick-side.

The Bruins dominated play from that point, making up a huge deficit in hits while keeping the Flyers out of the slot, but two errors on one play allowed Philadelphia to send the game into overtime.

With just over 30 seconds to play and Philadelphia with the extra skater after Mason was pulled from net, Loui Eriksson tried to escort the puck out of the Bruins' zone but it was poked back in by Timonen right to Boychuk who whiffed on a clearing attempt in the high slot, the puck gliding to Voracek on the left post who found Lacavalier streaking in from the opposite side to knot the score.

After a furiously paced overtime period, Bergeron and Flyers' captain Claude Giroux tallied in the shootout to send that to extra frames as well, Rask stoning Matt Read and Voracek while Mason got the best of Boston's David Krejci before Smith got Mason sprawled on his backside with a shoulder feign and easily deposited the puck on the backhand.

Hockey may be one of the few sports where statistics tell a compelling story of a game, as evidenced by Philadelphia's 20-6 hits advantage in the first period, the Flyers' seemingly looking to intimidate a Bruins' squad who come into each contest expecting to get their opponent's best shot - and though the Flyers

Philadelphia had their best shot at taking the game back from the Bruins early in the final frame, but the Bruins killed off a long-term, five-on-three man advantage and the Flyers never seriously threatened after that - though the defensive lapse in the final seconds of regulation could have spoiled what was a gritty effort by Boston.

The Bruins set the franchise record for consecutive road wins with nine, but more importantly extended their lead over the Pittsburgh Penguins for the top spot in the Eastern Conference to 11 points with seven games to play, and by three points over the St. Louis Blues in the race for the President's Cup, given to the team with the best record in the league.

Boston's remaining seven games are less-than-imposing, though all but one are against teams fighting for playoff spots or better seeding and five of the seven are on the road, but all are important games as the Bruins try for home ice advantage throughout the Stanley Cup Playoffs, a huge advantage for a team that anything less than hoisting the cup would be a huge disappointment.

Iginla nets two as Bruins clinch Atlantic

The Boston Bruins have the most goals scored of any team in the third period by a wide margin, but even more impressive is that they have allowed fewer goals in that final frame than any other.

Bruins' goalie Chad Johnson makes one of his 33 stops

What does this mean?  Standing alone it could indicate many things, but when coupled with the fact that the Bruins allow the least number of opening period goals and are into the top 10 in the middle frame, it means that they have the league's top rated defense and get absolutely filthy goaltending.

Really doesn't matter who's in net, either, as both Tuukka Rask and Chad Johnson together are probably the best one-two punch between the pipes in all of hockey - so any Washington Capitals' fan that thought they were catching a break drawing Johnson in Saturday afternoon's matinee against the Bruins were apt to leave the Verizon Center disappointed.

And they did.

For a while on Saturday afternoon, Caps' goalie Braden Holtby matched Johnson's mastery against several point-blank Bruins' chances, the sole reason that the teams went into the room sharing a scoreless tie at the first intermission as the defense in front of him was slowly eroding...

...completely crumbling apart shortly into the second, a Jarome Iginla breakaway goal less than three minutes in triggering an avalanche of pucks into the Capitals' net as the hard-working Bruins outclassed a devil-may-care Washington squad 4-2 to clinch the Atlantic Division title.

Iginla potted a second goal later in the period, just 41 seconds after a Carl Soderberg redirection of a Patrice Bergeron power play drive got past Holtby - the Bruins scoring three goals in a five-and-a-half minute span of the middle frame, then spending the remainder of the period shoving the sluggish Caps around and using Holtby for target practice.

Soderberg had two helpers in addition to his goal, the first a heads-up play on the puck in the neutral zone after exiting the penalty box early in the second, winning a race to the puck on the opposite side of the ice and centering a pass to Iginla, who had split the Capitals' defensemen at the blue line and raced in unopposed for his 29th goal of the season...

...his second an attempt to redirect a Dougie Hamilton drive on the man-advantage in the third that instead slid right to a charging Bergeron who neatly tucked the biscuit in behind Holtby.

In between the two was his successful redirect and Iginla's tremendous effort for his 30th of the year, a textbook follow of his own shot from the right circle, the puck bounding into the high slot off of Milan Lucic's stick and Iginla snapping a shot through Hotby's pads.

The Capitals' did show some life toward the end of the second period - perhaps aware of the Bruins' stifling dominance in the final 20 minutes - and managed to push a rebound past Johnson with 10 seconds left in the frame to close the gap to two goals, but it wasn't nearly enough against Boston's collectively aggressive shut-down skill...

...Jason Chimera's goal at the end of the second was more a matter of Chimera being in position to take advantage of a rare Bruins' miscue, Boston blue liner Johnny Boychuk trying to tip a rebound toward Johnson to freeze the puck against a heavy Capital's crush on the goal, but the puck popped up in the air and the Caps' opportunistic left wing trickled the puck past Johnson.

The Chimera goal at the end of the second period seemed to energize the Capitals coming out of the room for the third, finding an extra gear and operating in the attacking zone - yet the Boston defense stayed true and disciplined...

...and when Washington's frustrated scoring machine Alex Ovechkin lined up an open-ice cheap shot on Boston's Loui Eriksson to take a charging call, the ice leveled out again and Patrice Bergeron's power play tip in made it 4-1, the Caps' compete level trickled down to nothing.

Even Washington's goal in the final minute resulted from a bad Boston error, this one by Johnson who stepped out of the crease to play a puck sliding in from the left wing, but Johnson could neither clear the puck nor get back to the crease before Evgeny Kuznetsov planted a tight angle shot to make the score look a little more respectable.

With the win, the Bruins tied a franchise record of eight consecutive road victories and for the moment have leap-frogged the St. Louis Blues in the race for the President's Cup - and Iginla's two goals tied him for 24th with Montreal's Guy LaFleur for goals in NHL history and gave him 30 goals for the 12th time in his 20 year career.

The Capitals missed an opportunity to climb into one of the Eastern Conference's two wildcard playoff spots, but instead remain tied with four other teams with 80 points, but still on the outside looking in as both Columbus and Detroit hold the tie-breaker with more regulation and overtime wins.

Both teams have a quick turnaround, the Caps hitting the trail to Nashville and the Bruins traveling to Philadelphia for Sunday tilts.

Rask in a zone; Bruins' machine in overdrive

The only thing worse for the Boston Bruins than waiting to get back on the ice after losing to the Montreal Canadiens, is waiting to get back on the ice against the team that beat them in last season's Stanley Cup finals - and on Thursday night, the wait was over for both.

And while the pain from the loss in Game 6 against the reigning champions has dulled somewhat over the passage of time, the sting from Monday's loss to the hated Habs is still fresh - but since the schedule precludes a grudge match with Montreal unless they meet in the post-season, the Chicago Blackhawks were a decent consolation prize for the frustrated Bruins...

...and with top line centerman Patrice Bergeron owing the champs a taste of how he plays when he's not nursing punctured lungs and such, the marriage of the revenge motives to the fact that the Bruins are playing as well if not better than any team in the league - well - the champs got a taste of the whip that they won't forget for a while.

Bergeron found twine twice and Carl Soderberg once as goaltender Tuukka Rask stoned all 28 shots he faced between the pipes for his league-leading seventh shutout of the season in a 3-0 Bruins' win over the short-handed Blackhawks Thursday night at TD Garden in downtown Boston.

Rask was stellar, thwarting every chance - even the three that pesky left winger Brandon Saad fired in on him, Saad's sixteen minutes on the ice spent trying to will the 'Hawks into generating any offense at all - the Finnish netminder putting himself squarely in the discussion for Vezina Trophy as the league's best goal tender...

...while his counterpart for the Blackhawks, Corey Crawford,  held his own for most of the game - allowing just a Bergeron redirection midway through the opening frame until he sprung a leak between the five and six minute marks of the third, Soderberg's power drive from the low slot and Bergeron's second of the evening putting the game out of reach - though the final goal was more about Crawford being careless than anything else.

Just 13 seconds after Soderberg snapped in a Chris Kelly dime from just inside the right circle, Crawford circled behind the net to play a puck that had been dumped in deep, backhanding the puck to defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson just beyond the trapezoid - except the Bruins had just made a fantastic line change, first-line winger Brad Marchand flying down the ice and picking Hjalmarsson's pocket, hitting a completely uncovered Bergeron with a pass just inside the left circle.

The goal wasn't there any more, though, courtesy of Crawford who in his panic to get back between the pipes tipped the goal forward, and Bergeron's shot skittered through the crease, crossing the plane and through the gap created by Crawford, bouncing off the end boards - a quick phone call to Toronto confirmed it's validity and the Bruins had more than enough on the scoreboard to best the Blackhawks.

The score certainly indicates a measure of dominance in the match - and Chicago fans can point to missing right winger Patrick Kane for their misfortune - but this game was won with a display of sound fundamentals by a Bruins' team that is on such a roll that they have lost in regulation just once since the beginning of February, sporting a record of 16-1-3 in that span...

...in the process taking over the top spot in the National Hockey League for scoring offense and defense - outscoring their opponents 73-34, getting stronger on defense as the season wears on, allowing just two goals or less in the past 10 games, including recording a shutout in two of their last four.  Clearly, the Bruins are on such a roll that they appear poised to challenge for the President's Cup and home ice advantage throughout the playoffs.

And any team that doesn't bring their "A" game against the Bruins are sure to pay a heavy price, as the Blackhawks found out on Thursday night - but if the Bruins were satisfied with their effort against the team that accepted the Stanley Cup on their logo on center ice last June, they sure weren't letting on.

"I would say it was a closer game than maybe the score showed, but we really tried to focus on our defense and not to give them much," defenseman Zdeno Chara told reporters afterwards. "Obviously, a team like that with the personnel they have, they've got to get some chances. But for the most part I thought we did a good job playing really tight defensively and not giving them too many."

That's about as close as you'll hear to a sigh of satisfaction from the Bruins, because anything short of Chara accepting the Cup on the spoked "B" logo and hoisting it over his head will be a disappointment.

Bruins fall to Habs; streak ends at a dozen

On Monday morning, Montreal Canadiens' right winger Dale Weise told reporters that he and the rest of his Habs teammates were pulling for the Boston Bruins to beat the Phoenix Coyotes on Saturday night, hoping that they extended the league's longest winning streak of the season to twelve in a row.

It wasn't because he's a Bruins' fan.

"We were checking the score the other night against Phoenix, and Phoenix was up going into the third period and we were kinda hoping that Boston would come back and win so we could get the chance to knock them off," Weise panned.

Bruins' Kevan Miller sent Habs' Travis Moen to the room for repairs

That turned out well, didn't it?

The visiting Canadiens rode the super-human effort of netminder Peter Budaj to get to free hockey, and Alex Galchenyuk potted the lone shootout goal as the hated Habs snapped the National Hockey league's longest winning streak of the season, knocking off the Bruins' 2-1 in a game that took three hours to complete.

Alexei Emelin scored the lone regulation goal for the Canadiens and centerman Patrice Bergeron was the only Bruin to solve Budaj, who stopped 29 of the 30 attempts by the Bruins while Boston goalie Tuukka Rask was nearly as stingy, stoning 22 of 23 Habs' offerings.

None of the players participating in the Bruins' rivalry with the Canadiens needed any extra motivation for Monday night's grudge match at TD Garden in downtown Boston, but the prospect of taking away a winning streak from the Bruins that has captivated the world of hockey brought an edge to the Canadiens' effort - even if the Bruins refused to acknowledge the streak's existence.

Weise laid down the gauntlet by letting the cat out of the bag to reporters on Monday morning, but paid a heavy price for his words - Bruins' defenseman Kevan Miller riding the rouge forward into the end boards less than five minutes into play, hard enough to make him kiss the ice for a a second or two, and when Weise's linemate Travis Moen came to his teammate's defense, Miller fed him a knuckle sandwich.

Both Weise and Moen were escorted to the room for treatment and Miller headed to the bin, and the latest chapter in the storied rivalry had it's lead - the rookie Miller adding his name to the already well documented lore of the Original Six struggle by taking out two Canadiens in one play.

Actually, that lead was written a couple of minutes earlier, just over a minute into the game when defenseman Alexei Emelin went low on Milan Lucic at the center line that sent him cartwheeling, the momentum from his full head of steam guiding him into the bin side dashers...

...but before Lucic could gain his feet, Bruins' captain Zdeno Chara had become involved, shoving Emelin's face into the ice to take a roughing penalty - Lucic skating back to the bench chirping at Emelin about how he had just awakened the beast.

Indeed, the beast had been awakened, and he was pissed - but he looked more and more frustrated as time wore on, never really getting into any kind of offensive rhythm - the 16 penalties lending themselves to some choppy play, listless an-advantages and the aforementioned protracted game time.

Emelin managed to temporarily stave off the beast with a power play goal on the cross-checking penalty Miller took for planting Weise, his drive from the high point redirected inadvertently by the heel of Bruins' centerman Chris Kelly's stick and hitting the net top shelf over Rask's glove for a 1-0 lead...

...a lead that the Canadiens managed to hold on to into the third period by playing a safe brand of hockey - clogging the middle of the ice and directing everything to wings, a ploy that seemed to enrage the beast as frustration set in, the Bruins preoccupied with their inability to center the puck into the slot to get scoring chances - settling for long range sniper jobs that rarely found Budaj.

The tide turned early in the third period, however, just after the Bruins suffered through a horrific man-advantage in which the pesky Mike Weaver disrupted just about every pass the Bruins' tried to make - Weaver tried to play a puck along end boards when Lucic sized him up and smashed him into the glass, ragdolling Weaver and bringing the sellout crowd to it's feet and some focus back to the Bruins.

The signature freight train hit from Lucic served a dual purpose - to punish Weaver for being such a pain in butt and for a blind-side hit he had laid on Merlot line winger Daniel Paille in the middle frame.

Suddenly, the Bruins were the aggressors and started willing their way through the Montreal defense, but past them was Budaj, who continued to stop any puck shot his way - that is until Bergeron managed to set up shop in the high slot and deflect a Dougie Hamilton rocket through his five hole with five and a half minutes left in regulation to forge a one-all tie...

...but neither team could find twine in the final moments of the third nor in overtime, the game coming down to a shootout, with Budaj stoning Bergeron, Jarome Iginla, Brad Marchand and David Krejci in succession, while Rask turned away efforts by Thomas Vanek, David Desharnias and David Briere before Galchenyuk's game winner four frames in.

So, the streak is over - that 12-game elephant in the room that the Bruins would have you believe never existed - missing out on the Baker's Dozen with the shootout loss, and now only able to claim going thirteen games, spanning three-and-a-half weeks, without a regulation loss.

Somehow that just doesn't have the same ring to it.