Bruins lose special teams battle, game to Rangers
A pair of strikes on Igor Shesterkin within a 16-second span in the second period had the Bruins sitting pretty through 40 minutes of play Wednesday night. But a third-period letdown on the special teams front paved the way for a New York comeback and ultimately another gut-punch of a Boston loss, this one by a 3-2 final at Madison Square Garden.
For the Rangers, the game-winning strike came with the Blueshirts down a man, and was scored by Boxford, Mass. native Chris Kreider with 8:06 remaining in the third period of a then-tied game.
Kreider’s strike was a notable follow-up to a Vincent Trocheck deflection that came six and a half minutes prior, and just moments after a Brad Marchand penalty expired. With Marchand not even back in his defensive zone at the time of Trocheck finding the back of the net, it was by all means a power-play goal for the Rangers, even if it didn’t count for one in the end-of-night box score.
At the other end of the rink, Boston’s goals came from David Pastrnak and Elias Lindholm, while the Boston attack mustered just 17 shots by the night’s end. This was the seventh time this season that the Bruins finished a game with fewer than 20 shots on goal, which is something they had done just seven times in total over the previous eight seasons (618 games dating back to the 2016-17 season).
This game followed a familiar trend for the Bruins, as their best looks came with Pastrnak on the ice.
In Pastrnak’s 16 minutes of five-on-five time on ice, the Bruins broke even with the Rangers on the shot board, at 7-7, and outscored ’em by a 1-0 margin. With Pastrnak on the bench at five-on-five play, the Bruins were outshot 12-5 and outscored 2-1.
The Bruins will wrap up their pre-4 Nations Face-Off break schedule Saturday afternoon against the Golden Knights.
