If you watched the game or just by glancing at the box score, you could easily conclude that the Bruins should have won this game by at least two or three goals. They had 73 shot attempts (!) to just 38 for Dallas. The problem was that despite outshooting the Stars 35-25, they had nine more shots blocked (13-4) and missed the net 16 more times (25-9) which is alarming. Old friend Anton Khudobin (33 saves; 2-1-1) deserved better as he did everything that he possibly could to earn his team a hard-fought point. He was sloppy with some rebounds and also benefited from an insanely quick whistle in the second period that would have wiped out an easy goal for Anders Bjork.
Owner John Henry, president Sam Kennedy and reliever Joe Kelly were apparently all the guys affiliated with the Red Sox that were still in town after their Tour De Force at local sporting events (Celtics game last Thursday and Patriots game last night) so they dropped the ceremonial puck before this contest with the repaired World Series trophy on hand as well. Kelly was wearing a personalized Bruins jersey with red bordering the numbers. It was a weird game as Dallas scored a shorthanded goal at 3:51 of the first period with Roman Polak in the penalty box for interference. Radek Faksa's high-school level shot on net apparently deflected off of Torey Krug's stick (or so he claimed in Boston's dressing room afterwards) but regardless, Rask has to make that save. Miro Heiskanen had the lone assist on Faksa's third goal of the season. What is it with Rask and first periods this season? He had sat on the bench for the past three outings since Jaroslav Halak (4-1-2) has greatly outplayed him in his first campaign with the Black and Gold.
Rask's teammates picked him up though as Pastrnak scored on that same power play, his team-leading 12th goal of the season. Bergeron and Jake DeBrusk had the assists as Dallas for some reason left David wide open (think Bruins vs. Alex Ovechkin in recent years) for a practice type one-timer at 5:11. You wondered if the B's would score another goal all night as Torey Krug rattled the post and Noel Acciari hit the crossbar in the second period. Bergeron had a shot that slid inches wide of the Stars' goal in the third after Khudobin got a piece of it and Bergy later hit the crossbar in overtime (it looked like it went in but I never saw a replay). Marchand's fifth goal of the season came with 31 seconds left in overtime. He waited on the side of the net (looking for a backdoor pass to Bergeron) but ended up picking the low far corner with the game-winner. David Krejci and Krug had the assists as Dallas was called for too many men on the ice and cross-checking 11 seconds apart (talk about a meltdown).
Including the Predators game on Saturday, Boston has five games in eight days so needless to say it is going to be a very busy week. Thankfully, they at least don't have to go anywhere besides Warrior Ice Arena for practices and morning skates as they welcome Loui Eriksson and Tim Schaller back to town not to mention stud rookie Elias Pettersson and the surprising Canucks (9-6-0) to the Garden on Thursday (7, NESN). Sadly, the Sedin sisters are retired so Vancouver is a little tougher to dump on now. Almost as rare as a Monday night tilt, the Bruins are playing in the usual Saturday night time slot (7, NESN) vs. Toronto (9-5-0) followed by Sunday night (7, NESN) vs. Vegas (6-7-1). It'll be interesting to see how many starts each goaltender gets over those three games, Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy has been abundantly clear that Rask needs to be better to earn more playing time. What a novel idea!
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