BOSTON – The Islanders rolled into Boston with a red-hot offense against a red-hot Boston Bruins team, and the B’s ended up taking the win for the 8th time in their last 10 games.
Goals from Brad Marchand, Jake DeBrusk and Danton Heinen paced the offense, but it was all about the Bruins defense and Tuukka Rask holding down the high-octane Isles offense in a 3-1 win at TD Garden.
After a scoreless first period where the Bruins held the high-powered Islanders to just four shots on net, they finally got things going in the middle 20 minutes. Brad Marchand took a pass and fired a tester shot from the left face-off circle that somehow trickled through the pads of Jaroslav Halak on the way to the back of the net.
The game stayed that way until the third period, and was only marked by a very iffy instigator penalty on Jake DeBrusk after he stepped in following a heavy Casey Cizikas hit on Charlie McAvoy near the Islanders bench. DeBrusk missed most of the second and part of the third period while serving his 17 minutes in penalties, but made up for lost time in the third when he scored on a spinning, firing shot from the slot after finally getting out of the box.
That was the way the game stayed despite a five-minute major call on Brad Marchand for interference in the second period, and a five minute major and game misconduct to David Backes in the third period for head-butting Andrew Ladd. Once again this looked like a very questionable call from the zebras on a fairly normal dust-up between Bruins and Islanders players.
The rest was up to Tuukka Rask, who stopped all 31 shots that he faced on the way to his fourth win in a row.
