Bruins Push Through for Two Points vs. Isles

BOSTON - When Jim Montgomery and Don Sweeney met to go over the Bruins' schedule before the season, there were several games they identified as potential trouble spots. And Tuesday night's tilt against the New York Islanders was one of them.
Coming home after a week-long, Western road swing with just one day - which was taken up by cross-country travel - in between easily could have prompted a patented "penciled in loss."
But these Bruins have proven they are different.
Despite the challenges they faced against the Isles - including a dreadful opening few minutes - the Black & Gold, once again, found a way to secure two points with a gutsy 4-3 shootout win at TD Garden.

"To get two points out of this game…I remember in the summer, when Don Sweeney and I sat down, this is the game that we looked like we were set up to fail," Montgomery said while noting the Bruins' bodies were slowly readjusting and likely still on Mountain Time entering the game.
"Everybody goes through it. There's a couple of games every year where you look like you should have success, and there's games where it looks like it's going to be a real battle. We were sluggish in the first, probably our worst period of the year, and [it was] expected.
"And in the second period, we started getting our legs going…it's an incredible effort. It's such a gutsy effort by that group in there to will themselves against a really good hockey team."
The Islanders, no doubt, knew the predicament the Bruins were facing and came out with a significant surge across the opening minutes. But Linus Ullmark was able to help keep the Isles at bay, holding off what could have easily been an early, multi-goal deficit.
"It's a lot of character," said Jake DeBrusk, who potted two goals during regulation and another in the shootout. "It's not necessarily the game we wanted by any means, and you can tell there was definitely some fatigue from travel. We had every excuse in the book to lose this one.
"And give the Islanders credit, they played a really hard game, and they played pretty consistent throughout and found a way to battle back. Also give a lot of credit to Linus. He kept us in the game the whole night."

Given Ullmark's strong effort in the early going, the Bruins were somehow able to scrounge together a 2-0 lead in the first period on two DeBrusk goals just 19 seconds apart. The first came on the power play when DeBrusk tipped home a David Pastrnak shot at 6:48 of the opening frame, while the second came shortly after when he shuffled a backhanded sauce pass toward the slot where it banked off an Isles defender and by New York goalie Semyon Varlamov.
"They definitely took it to us that first period," said Derek Forbort, who was charging down the slot on DeBrusk's second goal. "Linus kind of held us in there. I thought we got pretty lucky to get two goals out of it. But we kept grinding and found a way."
The Islanders responded with two straight goals of their own (Josh Bailey at 11:00 of the first and Noah Dobson at 11:43 of the second) to tie the game, but Forbort answered late in the second period with his first career shorthanded goal to put the Bruins back ahead by one.
The play began with DeBrusk scooping up a loose puck just inside the Bruins' blue line and lugging it through the neutral zone before dropping a feed to Pavel Zacha as he entered the Islanders' end. Zacha then fed a trailing Forbort, who collected the pass, drifted down the slot, and buried a pinpoint wrister far-side over the glove of Varlamov for a 3-2 advantage with 1:32 left in the second.
"I just dropped it to Zachs and tried to pick a stick, and maybe Zachs was gonna shoot. He made a great play and turned around and saw it was Forbs," said DeBrusk. "I didn't know where that puck was going. But he shelved it. It was a little baby sauce on that. It was a little finesse touch. I was really happy to see it go in. Obviously, it was a snipe. I was very impressed, to say the least. It was a happy thing to see."

DeBrusk earned No. 1 star honors after adding a shootout tally in the second round to tie it up and set the tone for Pastrnak's filthy finish in the third stanza to put the B's on top. The winger's three-point night made him the sixth player in the NHL this season to register a point at even strength, on the power play, and shorthanded, according to NHL Stats.
"When he has the puck, he has the ability to put defensemen on their heels," said Montgomery. "I thought he was attacking defensemen, like that play, that rush in overtime, wow. I thought he was ending it. I thought that was going to be the hat trick goal."
Ullmark, meanwhile, improved to 17-1-0 on the season with a 23-save showing, highlighted by, perhaps, his best stop in overtime when he stoned J.G. Pageau's backhanded breakaway attempt to keep the Bruins alive. Per NHL Stats, the netminder became the fifth goalie in NHL history to register 17 or more wins through his first 20 games of a season, joining Boston's Tiny Thompson (18 in 1929-30), Ottawa's Andrew Hammond (17 in 2014-15), San Jose's Evgeni Nabokov (17 in 2008-09), and Ottawa's Alec Connell (17 in 1925-26).
"It's been amazing," said DeBrusk. "It's probably the biggest reason why we've done so well. I think, obviously, everyone's been, for the most part, firing on all cylinders throughout the group. He's been a rock back there. It's something that gives you a lot of confidence as a player, knowing that he'll make the stops at the right times.
"It's one of those things where I feel like you can gain momentum as a goalie really fast when you string a couple together. Especially at the beginning of the year, we needed him, and he was there to answer the call. Even tonight, he was, and it's not fun doing shootouts on him in practice."

Wait, There's More

• The Bruins rebounded from their first home loss of the season to Vegas last week to extend their point streak at TD Garden to 16 games (15-0-1), the third-longest streak to start a season in franchise history (21 games in 1973-74 and 17 in 2019-20).
• Zacha added two assists and now has three helpers over the last two games since moving to center in place of the injured David Krejci. For the season, the 25-year-old is tied for second on the team with Hampus Lindholm with 16 assists. "It's been good, I think," said Zacha. "The guys are coming in [with] speed, getting open, like in the penalty kill goal it was our defenseman who joined the rush there and that helps you a lot, making 2-on-2s, 3-on-2s and odd-man rushes like that. When they're there they're open. I'm trying to find them and so far, they've been there every time. It's been good."
• Montgomery believes that Zacha - who has 19 points in 28 games and is well on his way to surpassing last year's career-high of 36 points - has benefitted greatly from being able to learn from Boston's veteran core. "Having spoken to a couple of coaches that have coached him, they told me that his hockey sense and his vision were really good," said Montgomery. "I think the thing that has helped him become an even better player this year is being around players like Marchand, Pastrnak, Krejci, [Patrice] Bergeron, [Nick] Foligno. We have guys that work, and you see the work that goes in day in and day out. It's almost by osmosis you become a more competitive player, and that's helped him. He's realized this is what makes these guys so good, and it's making him better."
• Zacha, who won just 20% of his faceoffs, acknowledged that he needs to be better at the dot if he wants to remain in the middle. ""I just think it's practice," he said. "When you don't play [center] - I didn't really play it last year either - so it's almost jumping in one game and then I'm playing it for 10, 15 [minutes] then jumping back. It's kind of the timing of seeing the puck blocking the stick and just getting more practice."