BOSTON — The Bruins nabbed their 50th victory and secured the first wild card spot with a solid 4-2 victory over the NHL-leading Florida Panthers at the Garden on Tuesday.
The only thing left to determine is their first round opponent, which will be the Carolina Panthers if the B’s don’t catch Tampa in the last two games of the season.
Coach Bruce Cassidy was looking to see how his team would check the explosive Panthers and he had to be happy as his team held the Panthers to just 21 shots to take the season series 2-1.
The B’s took a 3-2 lead into the third and could not cash in on their second and third, but Panthers coach Andrew Brunette got aggressive by pulling his goalie Sergei Bobrovsky with over three minutes to go. And with 3:05 left in the game, Brad Marchand snapped a 11-game goal-less streak to seal the game.
The two teams played an entertaining first period that featured two Bruins’ goals in six seconds and their customary last minute buzz kill that led to a 2-2 score after 20 minutes.
The Panthers took the first lead of the game at 8:00. The B’s had just done a terrific job of killing off the first Panther power-play but then they coughed up the puck on a breakout. Matt Grzelcyk made a nice maneuver in a tight space behind his net, but then he missed Erik Haula with a pass along the boards. It banked right to Gustav Forsling, whose screen shot beat Linus Ullmark for the 1-0 lead.
But the B’s were playing a pretty good opening period against the league-leading Panthers and they blitzed them with a pair late in the period. First, David Pastrnak fed Haula with a nifty backhand pass off the rush for Haula’s 18th at 16:18.
Then the same line scored off the faceoff. Haula lost the draw, but Taylor Hall flicked it away from MacKenzie Weegar and it went right to Pastrnak, who gave it right back to Hall for a breakaway. Hall fired an absolute laser that was in and out of the net before goalie Sergei Bobrovsky even flinched. It was Hall’s 19th.
But as is their way, the B’s made a costly last minute mistake. On a 2-on-2, Brandon Carlo let Anthony Duclair get behind him and had to take a slashing penalty with 10 seconds left in the period. And don’t you know it, that was plenty of time for the Panthers to score. In fact, they left half a second on the clock after Sam Reinhart scored on a rebound off the post to tie the game going into the first intermission.
But the one good thing about giving up so many late period goals – if you can call it that – is the fact that the B’s equilibrium seems to no longer get negatively altered by what were once considered back-breaking goals.
They regained the lead at 4:59 of the second on Jake DeBrusk’s 24th goal of the year. Brad Marchand won a puck in a scrum out high along he right boards and fired a shot rihgt on net that seemed to stun Bobroskvy. He left a fat rebound for DeBrusk, who buried it for the 3-2 lead.
The B’s got a power-play when former captain Joe Thornton, who’d already gotten into a face-mushing beef with Tomas Nosek in possibly his last game at the Garden, tripped Charlie McAvoy behind the play. But the B’s PP stretched a rather incredible 0-for-34 skid when they turned down a couple of open shots.
In the third, they stretched that ignominious streak to 0-for-36 with two more failed power-plays. Bobrovsky had to come up with a great glove stop on Hall on the second advantage to keep the Panthers within one.
