It looked like things were again falling apart for the Bruins as they have already so many times during this hockey season.
The B’s were trailing 2-0 after forty minutes of hockey and it was the same old combination of careless offensive zone penalties and an ineffective penalty kill that were at the heart of the deficit along with an offense that hadn’t quite shown up either. All that changed in the third period, however, as the Bruins stayed out of the box, fired a game-high 11 shots on net and scored three unanswered goals for an unlikely, stirring 3-2 comeback win over the St. Louis Blues at the Enterprise Center on Tuesday night.
It definitely wasn’t perfect as the Bruins still have major special teams’ issues and a massively undeterred penalty problem, and they again had a whopping eight players without a shot on net when the game was all over.
So there’s still a passenger problem as well.
But Morgan Geekie finally scored his first goal of the season in his best effort of the year and David Pastrnak bounced back from a tough high-sticking penalty, in the offensive zone again, to score the game-winner in the waning minutes of the third period.
David Pastrnak gives the Bruins a 3-2 lead.
— Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) November 13, 2024
Huge goal, to put it lightly. pic.twitter.com/CuSEM7rh7z
The goal snapped an eight-game goal-scoring drought for Pastrnak and helped the B’s avoid a heaping load of tough questions in the aftermath of the game. It also gave the Bruins their first comeback “W” of the season and put a happy ending on a third-period segment that has been a true bugaboo for the Black and Gold most of this season.
It perhaps doesn’t really feel like it at times, but the Bruins are actually 4-1-1 in their last six games and are sitting firmly in third place spot in the Atlantic Division with 18 points. More importantly, there was belief in the dressing room during the second intermission that the Bruins could, and would, come back Undertaker-style against a so-so Blues team, and they did exactly that in securing an important regulation victory.
Absolute Cinema 😱 The Real Ghost Of WWE #Undertaker 🗿💥pic.twitter.com/7gIXzG40Qg
— Rocky (@ItzRockky) November 11, 2024
"We stayed patient, honestly," said Pastrnak, who finished with a goal, two points and a plus-2 while rifling a game-high 10 shots on net in over 23 minutes of ice time. "I felt good after two. Even though we didn't score, you could feel that there was the belief, and we were really one bounce away because there were some chances. The goalie [Jordan Binnington] played really well on the other end. The mindset going into the third was good."
All of this is a positive turn for the Black and Gold after a harrowing month of October where trades and coach firings harshly, but deservedly, entered into the conversation. The Bruins could have folded the tent after a frustrating opening 40 minutes where the cameras caught the players swearing to themselves on the bench in exasperation, but instead they turned it into all-important results against a fragile Blues team that admittedly retreated into a losing shell during the third period as well.
"I pass up on some shots previous games, definitely was going with a shooting mindset."
— NESN (@NESN) November 13, 2024
David Pastrnak talks his play in tonight's comeback win@AndrewRaycroft | #NHLBruins pic.twitter.com/LwIMV6eA7h
Instead of doing the same, the Bruins responded, and some languishing players answered the bell as well in an important development. They’re now hoping they can transform it into a turning point kind of victory at a time when they really need to get on a roll and start letting some positive vibes flow a little more freely.
“It was galvanizing; you could tell the energy in our room after the game," said Jim Montgomery. “What I'm happy with is this morning we had a lot of energy. The players were excited to play. I thought we were going to be good. We started the game well. They scored a couple nice power-play goals in the second, we fell behind, but we talked about staying with it for 60 minutes and playing the right way.
“Even though we made a couple mistakes in the third still, because you're going to make mistakes, we just kept battling. We got to the goal line. We got some greasy goals. I know the last one was a nice goal, but even if you look at [Charlie] McAvoy's goal, the shot is beautiful. It's a second- and third-effort League and that's what we talked about.”
Is a rousing third period of hockey on a Tuesday night in St. Louis going to quell the chatter about Montgomery’s job security, or stop the growing rumors about the Bruins talking trade with teams like the Anaheim Ducks?
Geekie is a player that has factored into some of those rumored deals for playmaking center Trevor Zegras, so perhaps that was related to him stepping up and playing his best game of the season showing interior toughness, second and third effort on pucks and ultimately breaking through for a goal in his 12th game of the season. Whatever the impetus was, it was a long time coming for a player in Geekie who didn’t look anything close to last season’s version until last night’s victory.
"Obviously it was a big goal in the game," said Geekie. "I kind of felt like we were all over it tonight and it was nice to see one go in."
Don’t expect those questions swirling around this team to cease, though, as there are clearly some ongoing issues with a hockey club that’s 26th in the NHL with a pathetic 73.6 percent success rate, and an undisciplined team that has 12 more minor penalties than anybody else in the league as well. That is a toxic combination when it comes to sustained success at the NHL level, and no amount of feel-good third-period comebacks will erase those deep-seated flaws if they can’t be addressed sooner rather than later.
But that’s a story for another day, or perhaps even a story for a couple of days from now as the Bruins will face a much stronger team in Dallas that isn’t going to fold up like a chair as the Blues did on Tuesday night. For now, the Bruins should feel good about digging themselves out of their October hole and continuing to grind their way out of the doldrums with plenty of work still to go for a team definitely not firing on all cylinders right now.
But the NHL moves fast, and the Bruins will need to keep grinding to truly silence a lot of the growing speculation around a team that just doesn’t look like it’s approaching its highest level right now.