In a series where goals continue to be increasingly hard to come by, the Boston Bruins continue to get them at just the right times. Patrice Bergeron cashed in on a great forecheck from Blake Wheeler with 7 minutes to go and Tuuka Rask stood tall in the final minutes to give the Bruins a 2-1 lead at home on Monday night.
The series has definitely gotten chippier, as the two division rivals have been banging away at each other any chance they get. Just ask Matt Ellis, who was knocked out of the game with a crushing open-ice hit from Bruins’ defender Johnny Boychuk. With 48 penalty minutes scattered throughout this one, but only 5 powerplays combined, most of the infractions saw both teams send a man to the box, and one scrum late in the 3rd saw 34 penalty minutes handed down. Both Andrew Ference and Raffi Torres were sent to the locker rooms with 10 minute misconducts, while Vlad Sobotka and Andrej Sekera dropped the gloves in the game’s only all-out scrap.
Mike Grier scored his first goal of the postseason early in the first, beating Rask with a nice wristshot from the slot to put the Sabres up 1-0. Defenseman Dennis Wideman evened the score with a blast on a 4-on-4 late in the period, and teh score stayed even for the next 30+ minutes of play before Bergeron’s tall put the Bruins up for good.
Rask has been very good throughout the series, and was just as solid in this one, making 32 saves. No complaints about Miller’s play, either, as he has stopped everything you could want him to, but the Sabres’ inability to solve Rask has proven to be their undoing so far.