BOSTON – The Bruins just keep finding ways to win on a nightly basis.
They were outplayed for stretches of Thursday night’s game against the Philadelphia Flyers, but Brad Marchand stepped up again as the hero when the Bruins needed him in a 3-2 win over the Broad Street Bullies at TD Garden.
Marchand crashed the net and pushed home a loose puck in the paint for his 29th goal of the season after David Pastrnak had attempted jamming the puck through Flyers goaltender Alex Lyon. The Marchand goal arrived with just 22 seconds remaining in the third period, and continues an epic run for No. 63 stepping up with Brad Marchand, Charlie McAvoy and David Backes all missing from the Black and Gold lineup.
The Flyers jumped all over the Bruins quickly after Kevan Miller took a high-sticking penalty on Wayne Simmonds less than two minutes into the game.
All it took was a juicy Tuukka Rask rebound, a between-the-legs, no-look pass from Nolan Patrick to Jakub Voracek for the power play strike, and the Flyers were off and running. The Bruins tied it up midway through the first period when Riley Nash was able to finish off a dogged, determined shift for Boston’s top line for his career-best 13th goal of the season.
The Bruins finished out the first period with a flourish as Tommy Wingels turned over a puck while spinning around Simmonds at the Bruins blue line, and that turned into a Zdeno Chara stretch pass to Brian Gionta breaking away behind the Flyers defense for his first goal of the season.
The only goal in the second period was a bit of soft one allowed by Rask as a Jori Lehtera beat him between the pads on a 2-on-1 shorthanded rush to tie up the game, and leave it all to come down to the latter moments of the game.