We will most assuredly look back on Sunday night’s breakout two-goal game for 19-year-old Matt Poitras as the performance that stamped his passport as a bona fide NHL player.
The hockey canvas is blank for Poitras to show just how good he can be as a teenager in the best hockey league in the world, but once again he showed he belongs in the NHL. In the middle of a nine-game audition to remain with the Black and Gold, Poitras scored a pair of third-period goals to help elevate the Bruins to a 3-1 win over the Anaheim Ducks at the Honda Center that’s pushed them to an impressive 5-0-0 to start the season.
The Bruins looked ripe for defeat after an uninspired opening 40 minutes that preceded Mason MacTavish scoring for Anaheim in the third period to give the Ducks a slim lead. But that’s when Poitras and the Bruins kicked it into another gear and showed a little something special on the ice.
Less than 90 seconds later, Poitras flipped home a perfect backhanded pass from Morgan Geekie to tie up the game in a nifty transition play, and four minutes later the rookie center banged home a rebound of a Jake DeBrusk shot for the game-winning goal. It was very reminiscent of a then 19-year-old Milan Lucic collecting a Gordie Howe hat trick on the road in Los Angeles back in 2007 during a performance that eventually won him a permanent spot with the Black and Gold.
“It's pretty surreal,” said Poitras, who became the fifth youngest Boston Bruins player (19 years, 226 days old) to net a two-goal game in the last 30 years while joining an extremely select group of NHL players that includes Patrice Bergeron, David Pastrnak, Phil Kessel and Sergei Samsonov. “Just seeing the puck go in the net, I was really excited. I don't really know what I did. I kind of blacked out a little bit. But super excited and super happy. It's a surreal feeling.”
Only four Bruins recorded their first multi-goal game at a younger age than Matt Poitras (19 years, 226 days) over the past 30 years.
— Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) October 23, 2023
David Pastrnak (18 years, 230 days)
Phil Kessel (19 years, 107 days)
Patrice Bergeron (18 years, 172 days
Sergei Samsonov (19 years, 164 days)
This time it was Poitras buzzing around the danger areas, winning battles and doing what needed to be done in a physical, heavy game against the Ducks where both sides were throwing punishingly big hits.
Poitras rose above all that for the two goals, a plus-2 performance and seven shot attempts in 15:46 of ice time while looking very comfortable in a high-performance forward combination with Geekie and DeBrusk. Both goals happened because Poitras was getting around the front of the net, and because he was persistent with it after missing on a few close calls earlier in the third period.
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Just as Poitras did during an impressive training camp this fall, the playmaking rookie just keeps clearing hurdles to show his NHL readiness, and his unique standing as a talented young player that matured at exactly the perfect time for the Black and Gold. This time, though, he’s doing it during the NHL regular season against the best hockey players in the world, and simply proving there is absolutely no reason to send him back to the OHL ever again.
“If you're going to produce in this league, you got to be willing to play inside the dots,” said Jim Montgomery to reporters in Anaheim. “And that's what I love about [Poitras] is whether it's 1-on-1 battles in the corners or getting to the hard areas, he's willing to go to areas where you're gonna have success.
“He's a hockey player, he competes. He believes in himself. He's always looking to hang on to pucks and make plays that are going to produce offense. I think it's instinct. I think he has a nose for the puck, the puck kind of follows him around and that's what happens with guys that are good offensive hockey players, they got a nose for where the puck's going.”
Poitras is simply too valuable to the Boston Bruins as a top-6 center candidate that’s now allowing Jim Montgomery to load up with Brad Marchand, Pavel Zacha and David Pastrnak on the other top forward line. That was how things started and finished against the Ducks, and that felt like forward combos that could get some time to build chemistry together.
It definitely took some time for both groups to find their way on Sunday night against a Ducks team that was maxing out effort for new head coach Greg Cronin, but the third period was a nice sneak preview of the potential for this top-6 edition.
So what does this mean for the Boston Bruins over the long haul?
It means that the summer fervor for desperately seeking a frontline center has died down for the Boston Bruins. They no longer have to sell some of the valuables to land a center-for-sale like Elias Lindholm or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins later this season (or for Mark Scheifele until he signed a long-term extension with the Winnipeg Jets), and instead can patiently watch Poitras develop into an interesting pivot hybrid of Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci. Poitras brings a lot of the grit and desire to win battles that Bergeron had from his earliest NHL days, but also has the playmaking skill and elite hockey vision that the clever Krejci always showed with the puck on his stick.
It's a lofty pair of comparisons, of course, but Poitras is beginning to earn that praise with everything that he’s doing at an extremely precocious young age. The Boston Bruins have something special in the young center that’s come along in the perfect place at the perfect time, and everybody should get ready for a long view of Poitras at the NHL level this season after his winning performance vs. the Ducks.