After Jim Montgomery’s call-out, Bruins meet challenge with a character win over Panthers
"We played direct, we played hard, and competed all the way through."
COMMENTARY
Jim Montgomery didn’t mince words on Monday afternoon.
“I don’t think our team’s ready yet for the playoffs,” he declared, less than an hour after barking his frustrations at his players before commencing a disciplinary bag skate.
Montgomery’s critical comments held plenty of validity for a Bruins team after disheartening consecutive losses to the Rangers and Flyers.
But beyond the evident consternation channeled after a lackluster drill on the Warrior Arena ice, Boston’s bench boss was simply looking for answers.
With less than a month to go before the start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, few have presented themselves as of late.
“To me, as much as a team, it’s individual,” Montgomery said of the task at hand entering a back-to-back slate against the Panthers and Lightning. “Who’s ready to handle big moments? … “Who are guys that are going to stay patient? Who are the guys that are going to continue to manage the game? Manage the puck?Protect the puck? Who’s gonna win battles? Who’s gonna be first on pucks?”
On Tuesday night in Sunrise, Florida, several Bruins provided the adequate response to their coach’s queries.
There was 5-foot-9 Brad Marchand squaring up with 6-foot-5 Niko Mikkola.
Or David Pastrnak dishing out a crushing reverse hit on Matthew Tkachuk seconds before that board battle led to a Charlie McAvoy goal.
On a night where Hampus Lindholm recorded his first NHL fighting major, he added a painful block in the frantic final seconds at Amerant Bank Arena.
And it was Pavel Zacha giving Boston its first lead of the night with 2:21 to go in regulation — the byproduct of planting himself at Sergei Bobrovsky’s doorstep in Florida’s crease.
Be it Montgomery’s public call-out, the lingering sting inflicted by Florida last spring, or the urgency sparked by the impending arrival of playoff hockey, the Bruins picked a good time to deliver their best win of the season — clawing back from three separate deficits en route to a 4-3 win over the Panthers.
The Bruins now sit in first place in the Atlantic Division following Tuesday’s win, sitting just a point behind the Rangers for the top spot in the league standings.
“Monty’s message is we have to come prepared to play in practice every single day and we weren’t the other day,” Marchand noted postgame. “But the way we finished is the way that we played tonight. We played direct, we played hard, and competed all the way through and that’s what we need coming down the stretch and going to the playoffs.
“So I liked the response, I thought we had a good game tonight, definitely some areas we will continue to work on, but that’s a great team over there. They compete very hard, they’re very deep, they don’t really have any holes. So a good character win.”
As has been the case in several of Boston’s statement wins this season, multiple contributors pulled on the rope for Boston.
Trent Frederic rifled a puck past Bobrovsky in the third period in what stood as the Bruins’ third equalizing goal of the game, with Zacha completing Boston’s comeback with his own tally just over two minutes later.
Zacha, who added an assist on McAvoy’s first-period tally, also won 10 of his 14 faceoffs on Tuesday while logging 20:56 of ice time.
“That’s our team’s mentality — next guy up,” Jeremy Swayman, who posted 18 saves, said. “And no matter who is up, they’re gonna give it their all. Again — I’ll take every one of my guys in this locker room over anyone.”
Several Bruins might have left their fingerprints on Tuesday’s win, but it was the three skaters with letters stitched on their sweaters that set the tone throughout the contest.
Even though Marchand finished with just one assist, Boston’s captain ushered in the turning point of the game in the middle frame.
With Boston trailing Florida, 2-1, Marchand scrapped with Mikkola in the hope of giving his team a spark. The Bruins went on to outscore the Panthers, 1-0, and out-hit them, 10-5, for the remainder of the second period.
And sure enough, it was a forechecking Marchand — toppling over several Florida skaters like a pin-seeking missile sailing down a candlepin lane — that jumpstarted the sequence that led to that second-frame strike from Pastrnak.
“The second goal we scored — his forecheck — he wasn’t going to be denied there, creates a turnover that leads to the Pastrnak goal,” Montgomery said of Marchand.
Pastrnak’s 45th goal of the season gave him his second consecutive 100-point season — the first Bruin to accomplish such a feat since Adam Oates (1992-94). But beyond his two-point performance, the Bruins star winger ramped up his physicality against a bruising Florida team.
Tkachuk often serves as Florida’s wrecking ball on the forecheck, but Pastrnak’s reverse hit on the pugnacious forward allowed Boston to win the ensuing board battle — setting the stage for McAvoy’s first-period goal.
And in a game where the Bruins and Panthers combined for 90 hits and 36 penalty minutes, it comes as little surprise that Boston’s other alternate captain in McAvoy stuffed the stat sheet with two points, six hits, and three blocks over a team-high 25:12 TOI.
The Bruins are now 3-0-0 against the Panthers so far this season, with Tuesday’s triumph serving as a needed response following Monday’s drama.
The road doesn’t get any easier for the Bruins over this final stretch of the regular season, with Boston now set to battle the red-hot Lightning on Wednesday night.
Wins in late March may not mean all that much, especially with the stakes elevated in just a few weeks.
But for a team seemingly left rudderless last week, a win like Tuesday served as the steadying result that the Bruins so desperately needed.
“We want to be part of these games that will get us prepared mentally, physically,” Marchand said. “It’ll help us fine-tune our game, making sure that we’re playing the right way come to playoffs. When you sit in on your lead in standings and you get comfortable, that’s when you set yourself up for failure in the playoffs.
“So I love the fact that we have a lot of the top teams [ahead] — it’s gonna be competitive every single night. We’re going to have our mindset in the right place and be really detail-oriented structure-wise. So it’s a great test for us going down the stretch and I think it’ll benefit us.”
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