BOSTON — The Ottawa Senators have given the Bruins fits this season and, in Monday’s matinee, they proved again to be no pushover.
But the B’s did what they could to make sure they won’t seeing the Sens in the first round of the playoffs.
The Sens came into the Garden with two wins over the B’s to their credit this season, as well as a 7-2-1 record in their previous 10 to pull the outside of the playoff bubble. But David Pastrnak scored a pair of goals and Linus Ullmark made 30 saves to send the B’s out on a four-game Western trip with a 3-1 victory.
The first period has some good energy – and lot of penalties. The B’s had two power-play chances that went for naught while the Sens had a 5-on-3 for 1:50 that the B’s expunged, as they did another conventional Ottawa PP.
But there were also a couple of goals scored. First, Jake DeBrusk scored his second goal in as many games and seventh in his last eight games dating back to before his 17-game absence. He put the B’s up 1-0 at 15:09 with his 18th of the season. Brad Marchand beat Nikita Zaitsev in a puck battle in the right corner and got it to DeBrusk in the circle. With Patrice Bergeron a possible option for a possible backdoor pass, DeBrusk took it to the net himself. Goalie Kevin Mandolese made the first stop, but DeBrusk scored off his own rebound for the 1-0 lead.
The B’s couldn’t get out of the first with it, however.
In the final minute, Matt Grzelcyk tried to drop the puck back to Charlie McAvoy but Dylan Gambrell, who was trailing Grzelcyk, pick it off and fed Claude Giroux, who tucked it between Linus Ullmark’s pads with 30 seconds left in the period.
Much of the second period belonged to the goalies. Mandolese made a good stop on David Krejci on a backdoor play, but the save of the game came from Ullmark. Brady Tkachuk blew up Hampus Lindholm behind the B’s net and fed Gambrell in the slot, but Ullmark made a brilliant glove snare to keep the game even.
The B’s forged ahead for second time with 2:54 left in the period. David Pastrnak had scored just one goal in in his previous six games and had not scored a 5-on-5 goal since the last-minute tally he notched in Florida on January 28. But he picked up No. 40 off a nice play by McAvoy. The defenseman made a nice spin-o-rama move at the right point to lose his man and feed Pastrnak on the left wing. The sniper skated down to the bottom of the circle and snapped it over Mandolese’s glove shoulder for the 2-1 lead heading into the third.
And it was Pastrnak who finally gave the B’s a little breathing room with 7:50 left in the third period. As the B’s battled to get the puck out of their zone near the right point, McAvoy eventually flipped it out from his knees, giving Pastrnak a clean breakaway. He threw a fake a Mandolese and calmly slid a backhander through the goalie’s pads to make it 3-1.
