The Bruins’ second line has been productive and strong all season for the hockey club, and was the one forward line that pretty much stayed together all season for the Black and Gold.
But they were not good in Boston’s Game 1 road loss against the Buffalo Sabres to the point that Marco Sturm said he believed “they had another gear they could get to” as all three of the forwards finished saddled with minus-3 ratings after the postseason opener. It was a much different story in Tuesday night’s Game 2 as the Bruins took home a 4-2 win over the Sabres at the KeyBank Center, and Boston’s second line accounted for three of the four goals scored by Boston in the victory that evened up the first-round series.
There was plenty going on in a nasty alley fight of a playoff game where both teams combined for 94 penalty minutes, and key performers like Tage Thompson and Nikita Zadorov missed most of the third period after Boston’s mammoth D-man started a line brawl after dumping pesky Zach Benson at the net front.
Zadorov was exactly the kind of bullying Bruins presence throughout the game that Boston envisioned when they first signed him and drove the Sabres to distraction while serving as a deterrent to Buffalo skaters that were continually trying to get digs and swats on Jeremy Swayman in another sterling effort from the B’s netminder.
“What I can say is that was Bruins hockey right away. Right from the start guys were playing with emotion, but under control,” said Sturm. “Great goaltending, great special teams and five-on-five we played, we were hard to play against, and we played tough. So that’s us all season long and finally we got to it [in the playoffs].
“[The late goals are] gonna keep us humble. We just need to realize that no matter what the score is, we just gotta play our game and get it done.”
It was exactly the kind of hard-fought, brutal response one would have expected from a big, heavy and physical Bruins team looking to even the series before it goes back to Boston, and it put the inexperienced Sabres on their heels while the B’s very clearly won the goaltending battle between the two teams.
But the biggest difference-makers and needle-movers for the Bruins were Viktor Arvidsson, Pavel Zacha and Casey Mittelstadt as they powered the Boston offense in victory after being their most impactful 5-on-5 forward line all season. Arvidsson finished with a two-goal performance while playing with the dogged determination that also typifies the pint-sized forward’s game and kicked off Boston’s scoring with the second-period backhander that got through Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen’s five hole.
Then it was Morgan Geekie scoring his second goal of the playoffs with a backhanded dump attempt from center ice that somehow sneaked through the wickets on Luukkonen before he was eventually yanked from the game in the third period.
Zacha built it to a 3-0 lead in the latter moments of the third period on a power play goal off a redirect from the high slot, and then Arvidsson put the dagger in on the first shift of the third period, finishing off a 2-on-1 by beating Luukkonen to his glove hand. The trio could have had even more as a number of Bruins, including Arvidsson, had close calls with empty net goals late in the third period, and finished with nine shots on net and 12 total shot attempts, along with the three goals and five points in a busy overall performance.
“You could see it. They scored some big goals today. They just needed a poke…they just needed a little poke,” said Sturm of calling the trio out after a tough opening loss in Game 1. “I knew those guys would respond. They’re great individuals and a great line and I’m glad they had a big game.
The B’s second line members also obviously took great pride in the
