BOSTON – All good things come to an end, and so it was with the 18-game point streak for the Bruins.
They got a late goal from Ryan Spooner in the third period to make it interesting, but they fell by a 3-1 score to the Anaheim Ducks on a rough, sometimes ugly effort at TD Garden in their first game back from the NHL All-Star break.
The Bruins never recovered from one of their worst periods of play this season as they allowed a couple of goals, and were outshot 15-5 by the Ducks in an extremely sleepy opening 20 minutes. The B’s just didn’t have it coming out of the NHL All-Star break, but B’s backup netminder Anton Khudobin really didn’t seem to either.
MORE BRUINS: All good things must come to an end
On the first Anaheim goal Khudobin bobbled a Cam Fowler point shot, then the loose puck bounced off Jakob Silfverberg and into the net when it got away from the B’s netminder. Four minutes later Adam Henrique beat Khudobin on a clean shot from the right face-off circle where the B’s goalie was off his angle a bit.
Things improved a bit for the Bruins after that as they had their share of chances, but they weren’t able to get anything past John Gibson. Worse still, the big, strong Ducks came into Boston’s backyard and completely pushed them all over the ice. Francois Beauchemin cross-checked Anders Bjork in the arm in the first period and knocked the rookie out of the game, and then in the third period Nik Ritchie took a run at David Backes and threw a late, finishing hit that the B’s forward didn’t see coming.
Neither of those plays were followed by an angry Bruins teammate taking the Ducks offender to task, nor did they result in an Anaheim penalty or a power play for the Black and Gold. So essentially the B’s looked like they were standing around waiting to get pushed and shoved by the Ducks, and it wasn’t a good look at all for the B’s.
