It’s going to be fascinating to see how things develop in Friday night’s pivotal Game 3 at TD Garden for the Boston Bruins and the Florida Panthers.
Boston dominated Game 1 thanks in part to the pure adrenaline from their thrilling first round series finish and also perhaps due to an idle week that the Panthers came off after their first-round match finishing off the Tampa Bay Lightning. Then the Panthers showed up in a big way in a physical, nasty Game 2 where Florida’s heavy forecheck gave the B’s major trouble before things ended with David Pastrnak and Matthew Tkachuk dropping the gloves in a hockey fight that ultimately energized and perhaps galvanized both teams.
Montgomery on Pastrnak/Tkachuk: “What I’m really proud of is Pasta. There are so many guys out there pushing after the whistles when the linesmen is going to be there. They just went out there & fought. That’s what you like” pic.twitter.com/spPVLo8mkf
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) May 9, 2024
The question now becomes, with both teams having won such one-sided playoff games, what remains for the five games left in the second round series as the setting changes to Boston at TD Garden. It feels like Game 3 could be a sneak preview into how the rest of this second round matchup is going to go over the next five games.
"As [Game 2] went on you could tell it was going to be a battle. It's an exciting brand of hockey for the fans I’m sure with how intense it’s been and how physical it’s been,” said James van Riemsdyk. “You could feel some of that animosity. That's what playoff hockey's all about. Those are fun games to be in. We don't like the result [from Game 2], but it's playoffs. We move on and get ready for the next one.
“We always pride ourselves on sticking together as a team no matter what the game brings. Whatever style of game that may lead to, I think we are ready for that. It just shows our group is very willing and we aren’t going to shy away from any kind of game that’s going to be played.”
The other question is how much carryover from Game 2 there will be headed into Game 3 after Florida’s suffocating, attacking forecheck style strangled the life out of Boston’s offense as the B's also very clearly was dealing with tired legs. Boston will need to be much better breaking the puck out of their own zone with creativity, speed and courage, or we could be looking at the beginnings of a repeat of last year’s first-round matchup between Boston and Florida where the B's struggled chronically against Florida's attack.
in Game 2, the Bruins bench boss chalked much of it up to fatigue and rightfully so when all the factors are considered.
“The first 30 minutes it was a 50/50 game [in Game 2] and I couldn’t tell you who was going to win,” said Jim Montgomery. “The last 30 minutes I think fatigue factored in. A lot of that is the way they forecheck, the way they finish checks…all of that adds to the fatigue. Some of it is the schedule.
“But anytime you go into a series on the road, and you win one out of two [games], you gain home-ice advantage. We love playing in front of our fans.”
The bottom line for the Black and Gold, however, is that they need more than the 15 shots on net they mustered against Florida in Game 2, and absolutely must find the time and space to operate offensively they had in the opening Game 1 win against Florida. The million-dollar question is whether that was a one-game outlier, or if a rested, recharged Bruins group can recreate that offensive energy against a Panthers that’s locked back in after an emotionally charged Game 2 victory.
Only time will tell and that’s what makes Friday night such an important bellwether for how the rest of the playoff series is going to play out, for better or for worse for the B's.