BOSTON — In a bit of a news flash, the 2022-23 Bruins proved on Thursday night they are indeed capable of playing a boring game. With the roller coaster brand of hockey, that fact — in and of itself — may not be such a bad thing.
And if fans stuck around through the 60-minute slog, they were rewarded with some entertainment value in the overtime and skills competition.
Taylor Hall, who scored the B’s only regulation goal, also scored the only shootout goal to lift the B’s to a 2-1 victory over the Anaheim Ducks at the Garden. Linus Ullmark stopped all four Ducks, including Max Comtois with a great glove save, for the walk-off win.
That came after a fairly wild OT period.
Hampus Lindholm, the former Duck, was tagged with a questionable roughing penalty on Frank Vatrano with 32.2 seconds left in regulation.
The B’s got it to the extra session to gain the point and then killed off the rest of it and in overtime. The goaltenders stood tall, with Ullmark stopping Ryan Strome on a 3-on-0 breakaway and then, with a Duck in the box, John Gibson robbed David Pastrnak from the seat of his pants with nine seconds left in OT.
The B’s dominated the first period on the shot clock, outshooting Anaheim 12-5, but with nothing to show for it. They did appear to take a lead briefly when Jake DeBrusk followed up his own shot with a backhander that just made it over the goal line. But upon further review, the replay showed that DeBrusk was offside before accepting Pavel Zacha’s cross-ice pass.
But while the B’s surely wanted a lead by that point, perhaps more important – in light of the way they checked in Tuesday’s 7-5 loss that coach Jim Montgomery termed “unacceptable” – was the fact that they played much more responsibly in their own end.
The B’s allowed just the five shots, but none of them could have considered high quality chances that Ullmark had to stop.
But the game opened up a little bit in the second period and the scoreless tie was broken early at 2:31. Hall, who has been looking to find his game this season, had what looked like a clean break in on the right wing but his chance was deflected. The B’s and Hall stuck with it, however. After Matt Grzelcyk (playing his first game and well enough to be bumped up to the top pair) and Lindholm played catch along the blue line, Gibson tried to flick a loose puck to one of his teammates, but it went to Hall and he scored on the put-back, his second of the year.
But the Ducks, who had already shown more life in the second than they did in all of the first, evened it up at 6:03.
Jack Studnicka, playing in his first game of the season, grabbed a puck high in the offensive zone that the Ducks had played back in and had it immediately poked away from him by Strome. That sent Mason MacTavish off on a 2-on-1 with Vatrano, who finished it off with a one-timer from the right wing.
Studnicka also took an offensive zone penalty later in the period, though Anaheim could not cash in.
He did not see the ice again until midway through the third and then took another penalty, this time for slashing the stick out of Max Jones’ hands at 10:31.
