David Pastrnak, Bruins leaders give team the season-saving response it needed
"Mac and Pasta, I think they weren't gonna let us lose tonight."
COMMENTARY
Stanley Cups are not handed out in the second week of November.
But a seemingly meaningless regular-season tilt in St. Louis held plenty of weight for Jim Montgomery and a rudderless Bruins team.
The often-repeated phrase, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” has apparently resonated with the 2024-25 Bruins so far this fall.
Or perhaps it’s more of a fitting designation for Bruins fans forced to watch their team struggle to find its collective footing due to the same miscues and lapses.
A game removed from Montgomery seemingly running out of answers after a listless loss to the Senators, things continued to sour for a desperate bench boss.
Boston took more needless trips to the penalty box, including a pair of offensive-zone, high-sticking calls in the span of 2:04 in the second period. One of the team’s few bright spots in Hampus Lindholm exited the game with a lower-body injury.
The Bruins’ already laboring power play failed to cash in on any of its four bids against St. Louis. To further twist the knife, a Blues power play that entered Tuesday with the worst man advantage (10.8 percent) buried two shots past Jeremy Swayman.
Boston entered the second intermission trailing the Blues, 2-0. The Bruins were 0-7-0 when trailing after 40 minutes this season.
Another disheartening loss for the Bruins could have spelled disaster for Montgomery and a Bruins team already taking on water.
But for the first time in a long time, something changed for the Bruins in St. Louis.
Their leaders woke up. And the resulting rally might have just saved Boston’s season.
“(Charlie McAvoy) and (David Pastrnak), I think they weren’t gonna let us lose tonight,” Montgomery noted on NESN’s postgame coverage. “I think they weren’t going to let us lose tonight. You could just see it. They were stepping out on the ice with an elevated purpose in the third period.”
For the first time since Feb. 1, 2021, the Bruins came away with a regulation win after facing a multi-goal, third-period deficit — storming back with a trio of goals over the final 15:07 of play to secure a much-needed 3-2 win over the Blues.
Pastrnak and the rest of Boston’s leadership corps left their fingerprints all over Boston’s comeback — with the Czech winger leading the charge with one of his most dominant games in recent memory.
After sparking Boston’s surge by setting up Morgan Geekie’s first goal of the season at 4:53 in the third period, Pastrnak delivered the coup de grace by giving his team a lead it would not relinquish.
With just 1:46 left on the clock, Pastrnak rifled a puck past a sprawled-out Jordan Binnington for his first tally in eight games — helping Boston push back over the .500 mark (8-7-2) for the first time since Oct. 19.
The 2024-25 season hasn’t gone according to plan for Pastrnak (or the rest of Boston’s roster, frankly).
Entering Tuesday night, Boston’s top offensive conduit had six goals over 16 games — with just three at even-strength action. He’s already spent part of one game stapled to the bench, and used Monday’s media scrum to clarify a Czech-based report that an injury sidetracked his offseason regimen.
But with the Bruins on the ropes, Pastrnak kept his team off the mat whenever he hoped over the boards on Tuesday.
Pastrnak finished with 10 shots on goal over his 23:49 of ice time. Over his 17:31 of 5-on-5 reps, the Bruins held a 22-6 edge in shot attempts and a 13-0 lead in scoring chances. And, of course, a 2-0 advantage in goals scored.
“The belief we had in the room, you could feel it,” Pastrnak told NESN’s Andrew Raycroft. “We obviously didn’t have any goals going into the third, but there was something different. We felt we were going to get it. … Heck of a comeback for us and a big win for our group.”
Not to be outdone, the other two Bruins skaters with letters stitched onto their sweaters also delivered against St. Louis.
Boston’s equalizer at 9:15 in the third came off the stick of McAvoy, who finished with a team-best 24:28 of ice time. The primary helper on McAvoy’s one-timer blast was courtesy of captain Brad Marchand, who peppered Binnington with five shots over his 18:10 of reps.
“Loved it. What a shot,” Montgomery said of McAvoy’s tally. “If I could shoot like that. Man, why wouldn’t you use it all the time, right?”
The Bruins are banking on Tuesday’s win being the galvanizing result this team has searched for this fall.
But there’s plenty of work to be done.
“You learn through adversity, you know,” Montgomery said. “ Despite the fact we’re 4-1-1 now in our last 6 — it doesn’t feel like it, right? … “When you get a game like tonight, and you realize that if you stay in the moment, good things happen, believe in the process – and we just worry about what’s next.”
Boston’s parade to the sin bin needs to cease, while the team’s power play needs to start finding some traction. More key cogs still need to pull on the rope.
But a win is still a win, especially at this stage of the season.
And if the Bruins’ early-season struggles give way to greater results this spring, one might look back on a seemingly meaningless matchup in St. Louis as the spark that started it all.
“Just be resilient,” Swayman said. “Have a lot of belief in this room. … That’s gonna be a game we remember moving forward. Definitely going to catapult us in the right direction.”
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