No More Having to Watch the Panthers for the Rest of the Season!

The Bruins have to be sad to bid farewell to the hapless Panthers for the rest of the season. This evening, Boston (42-17-5) beat Florida (24-33-7) 5-2 at the old BB&T Center. The B's took all five games with the Panthers in 2013-14, by a cumulative score of 22-8. Oh and the Bruins bumped up to first place in the Eastern Conference on idle Pittsburgh.

Boston was playing in a back-to-back but they still seemed like the fresher squad. BC's Jimmy Hayes was able to put a rebound past Chad Johnson (20 saves) at 7:00 of the second period for a surprising 1-0 Panthers lead. Of course, the Bruins recovered as newcomer Andrej Meszaros scored a power play goal at 9:58 on a laser from the point. His sixth goal of the season was assisted by Reilly Smith and Patrice Bergeron.

It was 1-1 heading into the third but did anyone actually think that Florida would pull it off? I don't think so. Krug scored his 13th goal of the season at 7:38 on pretty assists by Marchand and Bergeron. Boston cashed in another power play opportunity as Bergeron slammed in a low slap shot by Roberto Luongo (37 saves) at 11:21. That was Bergeron's 18th goal of the season with assists to Loui Eriksson and Carl Soderberg.

Hayes cut it to 3-2 with a garbage goal after the puck was stuck in Johnson's skates. Jarome Iginla added his 20th goal of the season on a wide open blast from the slot at 12:13. Milan Lucic and Zdeno Chara provided the helpers on career goal No. 550 for Iginla.

Chris Kelly wrapped this all up with an empty netter (his 6th goal of the season). About the only bad thing to come out of this for the B's is that Daniel Paille left after his first shift of the game in the first period. He was hit awkwardly into the boards, left and never returned. Is that Jordan Caron's music?

Boston concludes this three-game trip in Montreal (35-24-7) on Wednesday (7:30, NBCSN). The Canadiens are one of the only teams to impose their will on the B's this season, they are 2-0 and now they also have Thomas Vanek (shits pants).

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