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In a fitting turn, Casey Mittelstadt delivered in one of Bruins’ gutsiest wins
"We had to play hard and fight hard for it, but we got it done.”
Good fortune was on Casey Mittelstadt’s side Wednesday night as a ricocheting puck rolled straight toward him — and an open Sabres net.
“Obviously, it was a weird bounce, and kind of ended up there with kind of an empty net,” the Bruins forward said. “So we’ll take as many of those as we can get.”
The fortuitous bounce — generated off a one-timer from Jonathan Aspirot that sailed wide — allowed Mittelstadt to tuck the biscuit into twine with Buffalo netminder Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen out of position for a point-blank look.
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Mittelstadt’s 14th goal of the season was his most important to this point, knotting Wednesday’s road bout in Buffalo up at 3-3 apiece with just six minutes to go in regulation.
Mittelstadt and the Bruins might have had puck luck working in their favor on that equalizing goal.
But Mittelstadt’s efforts in the seconds leading up to that tally weren’t predicated on unpredictable caroms or unsustainable flukes.
It was Mittelstadt who helped keep that offensive-zone possession alive in the third period alongside a second line that has continued to carve up the competition this season.
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Viktor Arvidsson absorbed a hit from Buffalo blueliner Rasmus Dahlin as the toll needed to ferry the puck over from the neutral zone into the Sabres’ end of the ice.
Mittelstadt then did the dirty work along the boards, racing with Buffalo forward Josh Doan toward the skittering puck and tying up his opponent’s stick.
Mittelstadt, a former top-10 pick whose career was seemingly rudderless at this point last year, got the job done, emerging victorious from that puck pursuit with Doan to keep the play alive.
As Pavel Zacha corralled the puck and fed up to Aspirot at the blue line, Mittelstadt planted himself near the crease in hopes of tipping a volley past Luukkonen. Instead, he cleaned up the pinballed puck to give his club a much-needed lifeline.
It was the type of lift Boston needed, allowing Marco Sturm’s club to force overtime before Pavel Zacha tallied the game-winner just 38 seconds into the extra frame.
A little over 24 hours earlier, Boston skated off the ice at TD Garden with one of its more disheartening results of the season against a cellar-dwelling Leafs team.
Par for the course, they responded with a hard-fought 4-3 win over the hottest team in the NHL in Buffalo, securing a vital two points on the road in the second leg of an arduous back-to-back slate.
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Boston now has 88 points in 72 games, solidifying their spot in the playoff picture. The team is now three points clear of the Ottawa Senators (71 games played) and New York Islanders (72), and four points ahead of the Detroit Red Wings (71).
“Huge,” Mittelstadt said of Boston’s bounce-back showing. “I mean, especially with probably one of our worst games of the year last night, to be honest. So a huge bounce-back win against a really good team. Obviously, they’re playing really well. We had to play hard and fight hard for it, but we got it done.”
It was an encouraging response for a Bruins team that, through all of its ups and downs this year, has not lost back-to-back games in regulation since a three-game slide from Dec. 21-27.
And it was fitting that Mittelstadt, one of many unheralded players on Sturm’s roster entering this year, was the one who pulled on the rope to keep his team afloat in a tempestuous playoff race.
“Now they believe they can be the difference,” Sturm said of Mittelstadt and the rest of Boston’s second line. “And I think as a player and as a line, that’s huge, right? … When we need them, they’re there. So good for them. And big goal there by Casey.”
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Mittelstadt’s playmaking poise and ability to thread pucks into high-danger ice were well-established long before he arrived in Boston at last year’s trade deadline.
What was yet to be determined was whether the other details of the 27-year-old’s game would also take hold and help him stake his claim as a lineup fixture in Boston.
When Sturm took over as the Bruins’ head coach this summer, Mittelstadt’s stock was arguably at its lowest.
An asset acquired in the Charlie Coyle trade, Mittelstadt didn’t make the best impression on last year’s doomed Boston squad, scoring four goals and six total points over 18 games. Slotted in his usual spot at center, Mittelstadt wasn’t doing enough down either end of the ice to pull Boston out of its sustained tailspin.
“Everyone talked bad about him,” Sturm said of Mittelstadt earlier this week. “Part of it was probably the truth. But I don’t know. Before I get involved in all that conversation, I wanted to see it. I think he proved everyone wrong at this point. Because he’s playing really good.”
During training camp and preseason play, Sturm took note of Mittelstadt’s ability to retrieve pucks cleanly off the boards and his knack for finding soft areas in an opponent’s D-zone coverage.
Boston’s head coach opted to slot Mittelstadt over to wing, imploring him to focus more on supporting a two-way pivot in Zacha and a straight-line sparkplug in Arvidsson.
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“I took the pressure off him just to be the offensive guy,” Sturm said. “I think when he came here, you even said he’s an offensive guy. Maybe he isn’t. Look at him now. He does the defensive part probably better than the offensive part.”
There were some growing pains at first, with Sturm healthy scratching Mittelstadt after he scored two goals and zero assists in his six games of the season.
In the 56 games since then, Mittelstadt has scored 12 goals and 35 total points — serving a key role on Boston’s most impactful forward grouping.
“At the beginning of the year, we really figured it out defensively. And since then, we’ve kind of trusted that, and the offense has started to come,” Mittelstadt said of the second line. “So, yeah, we believe that we want to be out there. And I think we’re doing a good job.”
Mittelstadt’s resurgence has been far from an outlier on a Bruins team littered with players who have seemingly found new life in Sturm’s system.
Sturm and his staff will need to rely on those same cast-offs, journeymen, and unproven youngsters more than ever if this resilient team wants to extend its season into late April.
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