Joe Haggerty's Talking Points from the Bruins' 3-2 OT win over the Rangers

Share

GOLD STAR: David Pastrnak just continues to dazzle and impress with his performances night in and night out. This time around, it was Pastrnak scoring the tying goal in the third period for his 24th of the season. Then, No. 88 again dangled through Rangers defenders in overtime before setting up a wide-open David Krejci in the slot for the OT winner. Pastrnak and the Bruins clearly weren’t at their best for most of the game, but they made plays when it mattered in the third period and OT. Pastrnak also finished with 10 shot attempts, two hits, two takeaways and a plus-2 in 21:42 of ice time. Still, it was the OT offensive zone rush that will be on the highlight reels and it allowed the B’s to skate away with the two points.

BLACK EYE: For such a big, strong winger, Chris Kreider was pretty close to invisible on Friday afternoon at TD Garden. Kreider was a minus-1 and finished with just one shot on net for a Rangers attack that could have used him in the first few periods. Then Kreider got blown up with a huge hit from Charlie McAvoy in the closing minutes of the third period in a little BU-on-BC crime to add insult to injury prior to Boston winning in overtime. Certainly, Kreider is a guy who should be on Boston’s radar given his size, strength and skill level as a free-agent-to-be, but games such as Friday's shouldn’t get anybody excited about the prospect of him wearing Black and Gold at some point soon.

TURNING POINT: The Rangers had six power plays and more than 10 minutes of power-play time, but they did nothing with it. The biggest turning point for the Bruins was killing off a four-minute power play for the Blueshirts after Par Lindholm was whistled for a double-minor high-sticking call with seven minutes left in the third period. The Bruins killed it off with some help from Jaroslav Halak and the TD Garden crowd got riled up with each passing clear. Once the Bruins had successfully killed off the four-minute PP without any damage to preserve the tie at 2, it helped push things to overtime, where Pastrnak and Krejci did their thing.

HONORABLE MENTION: Halak deserves plenty of credit for keeping the Bruins in the game when they weren’t doing much of anything in the first 40 minutes. Halak made 10 stops in the first period when the Bruins basically disappeared in the second half of the period. He made another 10 stops in the second period until Sean Kuraly scored and finally got the B's going. Halak was at his best in the third, though, when he stood tall on the Rangers' four-minute power play where they couldn't get anything through the Bruins backup netminder. Halak finished with 26 saves and outdueled Henrik Lundqvist.

BY THE NUMBERS: 4 – the number of players in NHL history with 12 goals in each of the first two months of the season, with Pastrnak now joining a list that includes just Mario Lemieux, Mike Bossy and Wayne Gretzky. That is big-time company.

QUOTE TO NOTE: “We had some passengers, not a trait of our team, but tonight, we did. So, we mixed it. I thought Jack [Studnicka] could give us some energy. He wants to prove he can play at this level, so you’re going to get the effort no matter what; we’ll fix the mistakes along the way. The effort was there on [the Sean Kuraly] goal.” –Bruce Cassidy, on moving forwards around in the line combos including Jack Studnicka with some "passengers" up front on Friday afternoon.

Click here to download the new MyTeams App by NBC Sports! Receive comprehensive coverage of your teams and stream the Celtics easily on your device.

 

Contact Us