BOSTON – The Bruins had four games against the Florida Panthers over the final few months of the season, and one could guess they were going to factor into Boston’s final standing after 82 games. The getting-ready-to-golf Panthers beat the Bruins in three out of those four games with the last one coming into the final game of the season, 4-2, at TD Garden.
The loss pushed the Bruins down to second place in the Atlantic Division behind Tampa Bay, so the Bruins will face Toronto in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs with opening night taking place Thursday at TD Garden.
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The Bruins didn’t play well in the first two periods. They didn’t take care of the puck in their own zone, they didn’t really do much to attack Florida and their goaltending wasn’t operating at a high level either.
So they trailed at each of the first two intermissions, first by a goal after the first and then by two goals after the second. A ghastly Matt Grzelcyk turnover at the defensive blue line to Frank Vatrano opened things up for Henrik Borgstrom to score his first NHL goal from the high slot where it looked like his wrist shot was fired through the legs of Adam McQuaid.
David Backes and the Bruins stormed back to tie it up with a blue collar goal with the B’s power forward camped in front, where he outmuscled Borgstrom for the rebound of a Kevan Miller shot and then flipped it past James Reimer. Vatrano was back at it again at the end of the period, however, as he fired off a quick release snapper from the high slot that beat Rask high to the glove hand.
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Florida extended their lead in the second period when Maxim Mamin scored on another one-timer from the right face-off circle where it looked Rask had enough time to recover and potentially made save bid on the puck.
The Bruins closed it to one in the third period on David Pastrnak’s 35th goal of the season after Jonathan Huberdeau went off for four minutes with a bloody high stick of Zdeno Chara in front of the Panthers bench. That’s as close as the Bruins got, however, as Evgenii Dadonov scored a late rebound goal in the third period to ice it for the Panthers after a couple of close calls for a B’s team that was pushing it at the very end.
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