The greatest regular season team in NHL history started their Stanley Cup Playoff run with a victory on Monday night. Brad Marchand had a second period goal that proved to be the game winner, as the Boston Bruins defeated the Florida Panthers 3-1 in game one of a First Round Eastern Conference Playoff series at TD Garden.
Florida, who earned the second wild card in the East, carried the play for a majority of the first period and outshot Boston 15-8. The Bruins though had the best chances and got the only goal of the opening 20 minutes. A shot by Pavel Zacha was stopped, but Tyler Bertuzzi got to the loose puck in the crease and shoveled a no-look backhanded pass to a wide open David Pastrnak who buried it into an empty net on the powerplay at 5:58. The B’s had a pair of 2 on 1 breakouts in a 1:14 span later in the period, but Panthers goalie Alex Lyon made a pad save on both Bertuzzi and Trent Frederic to keep it 1-0.
Brad Marchand extended the Boston lead early in the second period. Charlie McAvoy from center ice sent a lead pass to Marchand up the left wing, and Marchand fired a shot with not alot on it from the top of the left faceoff circle that deflected off the glove of Lyon and into the back of the cage for the game winner at 3:41. Florida got it back though less than three minutes later when Matthew Tkachuk took advantage of a good break at 6:34 to cut the Panthers deficit to 2-1. The puck came around the boards and Bruins defenseman Dmitry Orlov tried to play it on his backhand, but instead deflected it to Tkachuk right in front of goal and he buried the unassisted marker past Linus Ullmark. Boston got their two goal lead back and ended the scoring late in the period. After some chaos in front of the net, a shot in the crease by Bertuzzi just sat on top of the pad of Lyon but he had no idea where the puck was and Jake Debrusk dove in and chipped it in at 17:32 for the final margin of victory.
Bertuzzi was the only multiple point scorer in the game with two assists in the win. Ullmark made 31 saves. Boston (65-12-5 in regular season) played without Patrice Bergeron, who missed most of the Bruins final regular season game in Montreal after suffering an upper body injury. Lyon made 26 saves in the loss for Florida, who entered these playoffs with a record of 42-32-8 in the regular year. The Bruins went 1-2 on the powerplay, while the Panthers went 0-2. Game two is Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Boston is now 50-1-1 this season when leading by two goals or more at any point in a game.
Story by Chris Lessner
