Any successful hockey team is going to have a few “identity wins” during a long 82-game regular season where the players, coaches and management discover who and what they are, and more importantly where exactly they are going over the course of a seven-month season gauntlet.
The Bruins have enjoyed some encouraging, and sometimes surprising, wins while building up a 19-5-4 record this season, but none of the others might end up as memorable from a character-building standpoint as Friday night’s 5-4 shootout victory over the Islanders at USB Arena.
It was a game where the B’s never held a lead until the very end when David Pastrnak buried one of his shootout specials, drawing way back and using the full flex on his stick to beat Ilya Sorokin inside the far post.
But it was also a game where they simply never capitulated, even after falling behind 2-0 in the second period, or having a Brad Marchand game-tying goal called back in the second half of the third period when seemingly everything was on the line.
In both instances, veteran Bruins players simply stepped up and exhibited poise in big moments while making plays to regain the momentum and ultimately push the game into overtime. It all added up to Jim Montgomery calling it “the biggest win of the year” for his team as they took three out of four points on a tough two-game road trip through New York/New Jersey area while missing key Bruins cogs Charlie McAvoy and Pavel Zacha with injuries.
But it was less about the undermanned lineup banding together and much more about the team’s collective refusal to bend, or break, even as they were digging themselves out from early in the contest.
“It felt like we were going to push right to the end,” said Montgomery. “We didn't know if we were going to be able to tie it up or not. To me, that's the biggest win of the year, just because of the attitude of the bench. It's the first time where I felt like there was energy, emotion, and everybody believed.”
Those kinds of wins are important throughout a long, arduous season as they give any hockey team the stone-cold belief, they can come back from any deficit simply because they have done it before. That is easier to do when a team is lethal on the power play as Boston was with three PP goals over the course of the game and has individual skaters like Charlie Coyle and Pastrnak doing the spectacular in the shootout.
The Pastrnak shootout winner was a casual “been there, done that” snipe where he simply loaded back through his hip and then flexed his stick with full force before steaming one past Sorokin. All the while it looked like he was taking a simple walk in Central Park rather than carrying the weight of a win/loss on his shoulders.
Pastrnasty, casual version pic.twitter.com/3meUYlERan
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) December 16, 2023
More important to the actual victory, though, was the play of Linus Ullmark between the pipes. The reigning Vezina Trophy winner made 33 saves, with none of them more important than a pair of stops on Jean-Gabriel Pageau and then Simon Holmstrom with the toe of his skate during a 2-on-1 rush for the Islanders while they’re already held a two-goal lead. The stop kept Boston in the game and then preceded a surging Morgan Geekie cashing in a PP score to halve the lead and get the Bruins truly believing that they could come back.
“It was long overdue,” said Ullmark, of the Bruins resiliency in a game that they never led until the very end of the shootout. “This is one of the things that we had last year, and that’s something that we’ve been building and trying to achieve this year. This was one of those games where it’s going to come if you just stick with it. That’s what we did.”
Perhaps most impressive was the way the Bruins shook off a potentially bad break late in the third period. It appeared that Brad Marchand scored a game-tying goal late in the third period that would have been a big, emotional moment, but instead the score was waved off as No. 63 punched the puck into the net as he was being tripped and taken down to the ice around the crease.
According to the NHL, it was a case for Rule 78.5 (i), apparent goals shall be disallowed, “When the puck has been directed, batted or thrown into the net by an attacking player other than with a stick. When this occurs, if it is deemed to be done deliberately, then the decision shall be NO GOAL. A goal cannot be scored when the puck has been deliberately batted with any part of the attacking player’s body into the net.”
Instead of sinking down into the abyss of feeling sorry for themselves, the B’s snapped right back into it and James van Riemsdyk scored a PP redirect after a nifty slap pass from Kevin Shattenkirk at the point spot.
“We get a power play goal, and now we're back in it,” said Montgomery. “We needed the power play to get going offensively because we weren't doing anything outside the first five minutes. And then we started to feel a little bit of a rhythm, and then we started to support the puck hang on a little bit.”
Over the course of a long season, there are wins that feel more like defeats because of the lackluster way a team can play during rough stretches of the year. Likewise, there are losses that can feel positive if simple puck luck gets involved, or if a hockey team is exhibiting a return to good habits as they climb out of a prolonged funk.
But on Friday night, the Bruins got both the result and the feel-good moment after overcoming adversity thrown at them all evening, including a bogus tripping call on Pastrnak in the closing minutes of the third period that had them killing a penalty in overtime.
None of it was going to get No. 88 or the Black and Gold down as they showed the kind of mettle that they’ll need come playoff-time with a group that time and again is rising to the occasion.