Talking Points from the Bruins' 2-1 overtime win over Columbus

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Here are the talking points from the Bruins' 2-1 OT win over the Blue Jackets Saturday night. 

GOLD STAR: Brad Marchand walks away with it after having a big hand in both goals that the Bruins scored, and finishing things off with an overtime game-winner with just 1:30 left in the extra session. Making it even better was Marchand doing the Conor McGregor strut after he scored as the boxing/MMA fighter was in the Zamboni entrance watching the entire thing go down while at TD Garden for Irish Appreciation Night with the Bruins. Marchand finished with the goal, two points and six shots on net in 21:44 of ice time, and even found the time to go a perfect 2-for-2 in the face-off circle as well for the Bruins. It is nights like these when it’s pretty easy to see No. 63 as one of the best hockey players in the world.

BLACK EYE: A pretty much nonexistent night for Artemi Panarin as he finished a minus-1 and had just a single shot on net in his 21:03 of ice time. Maybe Panarin was skating around on eggshells wondering if Charlie McAvoy was going to drop the gloves again with him and throw another beating his way, or maybe he was the victim of the Bruins greater attention to defense this time around. Whatever the case Panarin had a couple of shifts where he was noticeable and seemed to flash a little bit, but for the most part he was completely held in check by the Boston defenders. Give the Bruins defense credit for getting back to basics on Saturday night and that meant shutting down the biggest offensive threats for Columbus.

BRUINS 2, BLUE JACKETS 1

TURNING POINT: The Bruins have victimized themselves with so many slow starts over the last few weeks that it became a clear point of frustration with the entire team. So it was up to them to make the change and reserve the trend and get things going in the right direction right off the hop, and that goes double against a hungry, playoff-caliber team like the Blue Jackets. So the Bruins scored the first goal of the game on the PP less than six minutes into the proceedings to finally secure a lead, and then they outshot the Blue Jackets by a 12-6 margin in the opening period to really control play. Sure they gave up a goal to surrender their lead on a John Moore miscue at the end of the period, but it was a much better jump out of the starting gate for the Bruins.

HONORABLE MENTION: The other half of the OT scoring duo, Patrice Bergeron, had himself an incredible night as well. It was Bergeron that scored the PP goal in the first period to finally get the Bruins off to a better start, and then it was Bergeron again feeding Marchand in overtime for the one-timer game-winning goal. Bergeron finished with a goal, two points and a plus-1 rating in 18:51 of ice time, had eight shot attempts, two takeaways and won 14-of-23 face-off wins while truly dominating the Columbus centers in that category. Not only that, but Bergeron did the job at the defensive end of the ice as well. On many nights the B’s can say their best players were actually their best players, and this was one of those such nights for Bergeron and Marchand.

BY THE NUMBERS: 16 – the home point streaks for both Patrice Bergeron (10 goals, 23 points) and Brad Marchand (11 goals, 30 points) after they connected on the overtime game-winner vs. Columbus.

QUOTE TO NOTE: “He’s fired up, that guy.” –Bruce Cassidy on MMA fighter/boxer Conor McGregor after he took in Saturday night’s Bruins/Blue Jackets game during Irish Appreciation Night. 

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