BOSTON –– The Boston Bruins fell 3-1 to the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday at TD Garden.
It was a story of special teams throughout the night.
“I was really happy, actually, with our 5-on-5 game. We made one mistake, little mistake, and it cost us one goal. But other than that, I thought it was pretty good,” head coach Marco Sturm said. “You can’t give up one, and you can’t give up one on the power play, too. That’s a hard one. Overall, it was just a little bit frustrating because I thought guys were into the game, guys were sharp.”
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins gave the Oilers a 1-0 lead at 13:38 while on the man advantage, before Pavel Zacha knotted things up as Darnell Nurse sat in the box for tripping.
Elias Lindholm strung the puck through to Zacha, who was heading towards the net to roof a back-handed shot past Edmonton goaltender Tristan Jarry. The power-play goal at 16:27 tied it 1-1 and marked Zacha’s ninth tally of the year.
“I think the power play, we broke into the zone a couple times really well,” Zacha said. “It is getting better every game, but today it didn’t help us to win. We’ve got to get better with that, too.”
Zacha is now on a two-game point streak and has a total of 24 points (nine goals, 15 assists) through 34 games. The 28-year-old forward is skating on the second line with Casey Mittelstadt and Marat Khusnutdinov.
“He’s very fast. I think right now, he’s getting better every day. I think he’s getting comfortable making plays. I like playing with him,” Zacha said of Khusnutdinov. “He sees the game really well. He wins puck battles, too, which, for his size, it’s really impressive how many puck battles he wins and looks for the guys right after.”
