Patrice Bergeron scored two goals and added an assist Saturday afternoon, as the Boston Bruins beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 6-2 in the opening game of an NHL second round series at the Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida. Boston takes an early 1-0 series lead in the best of seven.
Rick Nash also added two goals for the Bruins, and Brad Marchand had a goal and three assists. Nash began things in the first with a powerplay goal at 17:11 to make it 1-0 B’s. Bergeron scored his first of the day 42 seconds into the second making it 2-0 visitors, before Dan Girardi scored his first playoff goal for Tampa 1:50 later to make it 2-1. Nash was at it again at 12:33, pushing it to 3-1 Bruins. Mikhail Sergachev once again made it a one goal game just 49 seconds after the Nash goal, on the powerplay cutting it to 3-2 Boston. On the play, Boston goalie Tuuka Rask lost his skate blade but despite the efforts by Rask the referee didn’t blow his whistle to stop play, allowing Sergachev to shoot a slapper by the distracted goalie from the point.
Boston owned the third period. Marchand scored at 3:32, before Bergeron got his second of the day at 10:11 making it 5-2. Tampa Bay coach Jon Coper decided to pull the goalie with just under seven minutes left, and Jake Debrusk put one in the empty net at 13:41 to finish off the scoring.
Rask made 34 saves for Boston, and the Bruins scored on the only powerplay they had. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 18 saves for Tampa, and the Lightning were 1-3 on the extra man. The Bruins have now won four of five games against the Lightning this season.
Game two will be at Tampa on Monday night at 7 pm.
