Garnet Hathaway scored a game winning second period goal on Saturday afternoon, in leading the Boston Bruins to a 2-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning to clinch the Atlantic Division Title at TD Garden in Boston. The Division Title is the 27th in Bruins franchise history.
It didn’t take long for the teams to show some of their hatred for one another, as three different fights broke out just nine seconds after the opening faceoff. Boston took advantage of one of their early powerplay chances in the first period when Patrice Bergeron scored the only extra man goal of the game. Brad Marchand skated to the bottom of the left faceoff circle, and threw the puck to the front of the net that went off the skate of both Tampa Bay defenseman Victor Hedman and Bergeron and into the net that was credited as the 27th of the season for the captain at 6:46. Hedman got it back for the Lightning when he scored shorthanded at 9:30 with a bullet of a shot from just inside the blue line over the left shoulder of Linus Ullmark. The Bruins killed off 1:10 of 5 on 3 powerplay time to keep the score even in the second, and then Hathaway would bury the game winner at 17:32. Matt Grzelcyk would fire a shot from the left point that couldn’t be cleanly handled by goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, and Hathaway was there right in front to slam it in between the legs of the Tampa netminder.
Marchand, Grzelcyk, Tomas Nosek, and Hampus Lindholm all had one assist each in the win for Boston who improves to 56-11-5 with their sixth straight victory. Ullmark made 26 saves. Vasilevskiy made 32 stops in the loss for Tampa Bay, who drops to 42-26-6. The Bruins tied the 2015-16 Washington Capitals as the quickest team to clinch a Division Title (72 games) since the current playoff format was introduced in 2013-14. Boston is also moving in on the President’s Trophy, which is awarded to the team with the best regular season record. They currently have a 15 point lead over the next closest team, the Carolina Hurricanes. If they win the President’s Trophy they’ll get home ice throughout the NHL playoffs. Boston is 30-3-3 at TD Garden this season. The black and gold are also trying to set all-time regular season records for wins (63) and points (133). They hit the ice again on Sunday at 5 p.m. when they travel to Carolina to battle the Hurricanes.
Recap by Chris Lessner
