Talking Points: Pastrnak leads insane five-goal outburst

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GOLD STAR: David Pastrnak went nuts in the third period with a hat trick to help spearhead the Bruins to a five-goal outburst that allowed them to erase a three-goal deficit, and win a very unlikely game against the Carolina Hurricanes. Pastrnak finished with three goals and four points along with a plus-1 rating, but it was his turnover that led to a shorthanded goal at the start of the third period that might just have sparked the 21-year-old. From there he scored on a couple of lethal, sizzling shots from the face-off dot and then iced the game with an empty net goal from center ice to cinch the hat trick. Pastrnak finished with a game-high six shots on net in his 17:36 of ice time, and for the first time in a while really looked like the electric, game-breaking performer that we saw on a regular basis earlier in the year.  

BLACK EYE: Brett Pesce was picked on in the third period when the Bruins began making their comeback, and he along with the rest of the Hurricanes had no answer for a B’s team that absolutely stampeded them. Pesce finished a game-worst minus-3 for the evening, had just one shot on net in his 16:23 of ice time and finished without a hit or a blocked shot in the kind of performance where you wonder if he was even on the ice. He wasn’t noticeable much at all in the first 40 minutes of the game, but he was on the ice for both the game-tying goal for Danton Heinen and the power play game-winner for David Pastrnak. Pesce had a rough, rough final 10 minutes of the game.

TURNING POINT: It was Matt Grzelcyk scoring Boston’s second goal of the game at nearly the exact midway point of the third period, and from that point on it was just all Bruins as they completely dominated possession, chances and everything else. They outshot the Canes by a 15-8 margin in the final 20 minutes and continued a variation on a season-long theme of completely dominating their opponents in that final period. Credit Grzelcyk, though, for stepping up and helping make the rest of it happen by scoring, and then Brad Marchand did the rest on the bench telling everybody else that they were still in the game down by two goals.

HONORABLE MENTION: Matt Grzelcyk needed to step up in the third period once Zdeno Chara and Torey Krug both went down, and he did exactly that at a time when the Bruins needed the mother of all sparks. Grzelcyk did it by scoring Boston’s second goal of the game, and the first of five unanswered scores to close out the game for the Black and Gold. That led them on their way to an unlikely comeback win, and it capped off a really strong night for the rookie defenseman. Grzelcyk finished with a goal, two points and a plus-2 rating in 19:26 of ice time, had two shots on net, two hits and four big blocked shots while absorbing a lot of minutes in the third period amid injuries. Grizz has had some very quiet games as of late with the Bruins working through an abundance of D-men, but he truly stepped up when the B’s really needed him.

BY THE NUMBERS: 3 – the number of consecutive thirty goal seasons for Brad Marchand after scoring his 30th in the first period against Carolina. Marchand becomes the first B’s player to score 30 three straight seasons since fellow Nova Scotia native Glenn Murray did it for the Black and Gold way back in 2001-04.

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