By virtue of tonight's 6-3 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs at the Air Canada Centre, the Boston Bruins officially wrapped up one of the best months (12-0-1) in franchise history.
The B's (15-7-1) were in dead last in the Eastern Conference when November rolled around but now they lead the Northeast Division thanks to their third straight win over the Maple Leafs (14-9-2). Boston picked up 25 out of a possible 26 points in November, vaulting them to second in the Eastern Conference (one point behind Pittsburgh). Overall, it was their best month since January of 1969.
The Bruins have recorded points in their last 13 straight games, their longest streak since 17 in a row back in 1983.
It is fair to say that so far this season, Boston has owned Toronto in their three meetings. To the tune of 19-5, including 8-2 in the third period. The teams meet again, on Saturday night at TD Garden in the second part of this home-and-home series.
11 Bruins had points tonight but the real story was the reemergence of the first line. David Krejci (1 goal, 2 assists), Milan Lucic (2 goals) and Nathan Horton (2 assists) all came off a milk carton after virtually disappearing for a while.
Tim Thomas (34 saves) was busy as he improved to 9-0-0 in November and 12-4-0 overall. His best stop was a breakaway attempt by former B's forward Phil Kessel. As I said on Twitter, it's hard to believe there are any goaltenders that are better on breakaways than Thomas.
The Leafs got out to a 1-0 lead as Mikhail Grabovski (6th of the season) scored a power-play goal 7:29 into the first period. Clarke MacArthur found him with a nice pass and Thomas didn't have enough time to react.
Lucic (9th of the season) tied it at 15:08 with a power-play strike of his own. Tyler Seguin and Zdeno Chara assisted. Seguin found Lucic close to Toronto goaltender Jonas Gustavsson (34 saves) and he roofed it with a strong forehand shot. It was Looch's first goal in his last eight games.
Boston started to take control after a hectic back and forth first with two goals in the second. Krejci (4th of the season) potted his first goal in 10 games at 3:33 from Horton and Dennis Seidenberg.
Kessel (-3) combined with Joffrey Lupul (12th of the season) for a pretty goal on a 2-on-1 at 7:00 which tied it at two.
At 15:30, Chara (5th of the season) scored a strange goal that nobody, including the goal light operator, seemed to notice went in. It was a low, hard snap shot assisted by Krejci and Horton.
Benoit Pouliot (3rd of the season) scored at 3:03 of the third and would you believe it was his third game-winning goal of the season? Weird. The most unknown clutch player for the B's made use of his sneaky good shooting ability, with help from Joe Corvo and Gregory Campbell.
Matt Frattin (2nd of the season) gave Toronto life as he banked one in off Thomas' leg pads at 6:00, cutting it to 4-3.
However, Lucic scored his second of the game at 15:21 after a nice cross-ice feed from Krejci and Brad Marchand's (9th of the season) empty-net goal ended it with 52 seconds left.
This is a quiet week with only the two games against Toronto but Boston deserves the rest after all the outstanding work they put in during November to erase their terrible start.
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