A busy day for the Bruins was wrapped up in the best manner: they beat the Senators 3-2 at TD Garden. Boston (23-8-4) will have to change up its lines with Jaromir Jagr on the team now but in maybe their last game together, David Krejci (1 goal, 1 assist), Milan Lucic (2 assists) and Nathan Horton (game-winning goal) were dynamite.
Ottawa (19-11-6) has one more chance to beat the Bruins in the regular season, thus far they've lost all four meetings and making it more painful each one has been by a single goal (2 in regulation, 1 in OT, 1 in shootout). This was one of the more exciting games of the season since Boston had a season-high 50 shots on goal and Ottawa had 47 shots on goal. Haha the shots in the first period were 22-19 in favor of Boston which more resembles the final totals from some of their boring contests of late.
Anton Khudobin (45 saves) and Robin Lehner (47 saves) might be backup goaltenders but they were both superb in this one. Khudobin earned the back-to-back start after his shutout in Buffalo on Sunday night and even though he allowed a goal 2:48 into the first period, he still came out on top. Ottawa's Colin Greening had the opening score as Boston was caught running around in its own end.
Krejci answered 40 seconds later by tipping in Zdeno Chara's shot from the point for his ninth goal of the season. Lucic had the second assist. Tyler Seguin sent the Garden crowd into hysterics with a spectacular goal just 1:01 later after a give-and-go with his BFF Brad Marchand. It was Seguin's 12th goal of the season.
After a scoreless second period as things calmed down only in terms of goals, Ottawa's Andre Benoit tied it at 1:55 with a shot that initially didn't seem to go in as Khudobin dove wildly like Tim Thomas. On replay, it was clear that it hit the back of the bar in the goal and came out even faster so it was ruled a goal.
Horton delivered his 12th goal of the season (four straight games with a goal) thanks to a juicy rebound on Lucic's shot with Krejci credited with the second assist. Boston survived a 6-on-4 with 34 seconds left as Johnny Boychuk was called for interference.
The only negative news for the Black and Gold to come out of today was that Patrice Bergeron got elbowed in the second period and never returned. As can be expected in that type of situation, neither his teammates nor head coach Claude Julien wanted to elaborate on what happened to him which should set off plenty of hysteria since Bergeron has a history of concussions. Not to mention the fact that he's one of their most important players that does seemingly everything well.
Jagr will be in a Bruins uniform, wearing his customary No. 68 on Thursday (7 p.m., NESN) at the Garden as the B's host the Devils (15-12-9). An interesting subplot is if Khudobin will get his third start in a row or if Julien goes back to Tuukka Rask.
UPDATE 4/3: The only move the B's made today was trading for scrub defenseman Wade Redden from St. Louis in exchange for a seventh-round draft pick. It becomes a sixth-round pick if he plays a game in the playoffs but don't count on that. He is awful and nobody wanted him the last few years so even though he might be better than Aaron Johnson and Matt Bartkowski, why would they throw them into this race?
Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli gave a vague update on Bergeron, saying that he has a "moderate concussion," whatever that means. This is his fourth career concussion (that we know about) so let's see how long this one keeps him out.
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