3 Stars: B’s fourth line caps great day with game-winning goal

The opening 20 minutes of Saturday’s matinee showdown between the Bruins and visiting Red Wings opened the door to plenty of bedwetting. The Bruins surrendered a goal on just their first shot of the game, they got stuck in the mud of their own zone at a consistent clip, and they were arguably lucky to be down by just two through the first period. Oh, and the Bruins missed the net four times in a row — four times in a row! — on a late-period power-play opportunity.

But when the second period gave Jim Montgomery’s club a chance to regroup and get themselves right, they did not miss.

In what was an 18-shot middle frame from the Bruins, the B’s put themselves on the board with their 26th shot of the evening, and knotted things up against the Wings on shot No. 27. It was enough to bring the sides even through 40 minutes of play, and set the stage for the most deserving goal of the season, scored by the Black and Gold’s fourth line, which held as the game-winning marker by the day’s end.

“Really deserving,” Montgomery said of the line coming through with the winner. “I thought they were our best line all night long. Right from the first shift of the game where I thought they got us going north, they had a lot of good looks and spent a lot of time in the O-zone despite the fact that I start them in the D-zone a lot of times.”

With the win, the Bruins became the fastest team to 50 wins in NHL history, accomplishing the feat in just 64 games. It’s also set the Bruins up to officially clinch a playoff berth by the end of the night depending on what happens in a Capitals vs. Islanders tilt on Long Island the Sens’ late-night trip to Vancouver.

Here are the 98.5 The Sports Hub (dot com) 3 Stars of the game from a comeback win at TD Garden…

• No. 3 Star: Hampus Lindholm

  

  Mar 24, 2022; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Bruins defenseman Hampus Lindholm (27) during the second period against the Tampa Bay Lightning at TD Garden. (Bob DeChiara/USA TODAY Sports)

• The Bruins were absolutely hammering Detroit’s Magnus Hellberg with shots in the second period, but the 6-foot-6 Swede was refusing to budge or give ’em much of anything.

  That was until Bruins defenseman Hampus Lindholm broke through with a through-traffic shot that beat Hellberg and ultimately brought the Bruins and TD Garden back to life.

  The goal was just part of Lindholm’s afternoon, of course, as Boston’s No. 2 defenseman finished the day with a block to his name, but led all Boston skaters with 17:25 of five-on-five time on ice. The Bruins also outshot the Red Wings by a 10-8 mark during Lindholm’s 17 and a half minutes of five-on-five play, which was a solid figure considering Lindholm basically split his time in the defensive zone and offensive zone fairly evenly.

• The 🔨 breaks through pic.twitter.com/1jmu4Rl5aT

  — Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) March 11, 2023

• With the Bruins for a little over a calendar year now, there’s no denying that 2022-23 has been a career year for Lindholm, who is now up to a career-high 42 points through 64 games played this season.

  That makes Lindholm the 16th-highest scoring defenseman in the league this season, and Lindholm’s plus-40 is the best in the league, with a plus-6 advantage over second place Brandon Carlo and Matt Grzelcyk.

  “The thing is that sticks out to me about Lindholm is when things aren’t going well, his belief in himself and his ability to make a difference… the confidence is unreal to me,” Montgomery said. “Like, if I look at the Pittsburgh game, I think that first period wasn’t a good period for him, might have been minus-2 [but] he ends up with four points that night. And I’ve seen it repeatedly. There was one game where I thought he wasn’t very good in the third period, [it was] back-to-back game in Calgary. And all of a sudden he found the fountain of youth or something and I’m like, ‘Someone just inject him with steroids because he’s just flying around.

  “His ability within a game to find his elite level is pretty impressive.”

• No. 2 Star: Linus Ullmark

  

  Mar 11, 2023; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Bruins goaltender Linus Ullmark (35) celebrates at the final whistle of their 3-2 win over the Detroit Red Wings at TD Garden. (Winslow Townson/USA TODAY Sports)

• The Bruins probably should have been by three or four after the first period.

  The only reason they weren’t: Linus Ullmark.

  Tagged for 15 shots on goal in the opening period of play, it took a shorthanded goal from Andrew Copp and a (way too easy) power-play marker from Alex Chiasson for Detroit to beat Ullmark.

  And it wouldn’t happen again.

  While Ullmark got a light workload in the second period (the Wings had just two shots on goal in the middle frame), Ullmark had to come up with some big stops in the third period with the Bruins on the hunt for a go-ahead goal. None bigger than a glove save on Chiasson on a net-front look.

• Great glove stop by Ullmark. pic.twitter.com/tkgUIIOgcz

  — Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) March 11, 2023

• The runaway Vezina favorite, Ullmark finished with a stellar 29-of-31 effort in the victory, and was credited with stops on all seven high-danger shots he faced at five-on-five play.

  The 29-year-old Ullmark is now at 33-4-1 on the year (his 33 wins are the most in the league), and has a league-leading .938 save percentage and league-best 1.89 goals against average to go with it.

• No. 1 Star: Garnet Hathaway

  

  Mar 11, 2023; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Bruins right wing Garnet Hathaway (21) celebrates his go ahead goal against the Detroit Red Wings during the third period at TD Garden. (Winslow Townson/USA TODAY Sports)

• Again, nobody deserved a goal today more than a member of the B’s fourth line.

  And it just so happened to be deadline addition Garnet Hathaway who scored it.

  With a fortunate bounce off Hellberg and right to his stick to the right of the Detroit cage, the Maine-born Hathaway, who played his high school hockey at Phillips Academy in Andover and then his college hockey at Brown in what was basically a complete tour of life in New England, tucked home his first goal with Boston.

  “I mean, the building was going crazy,” Hathaway acknowledged. “There are a lot of emotions.”

• Where there's a will, there's a 'WAY. pic.twitter.com/1yGZe1LQlO

  — Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) March 11, 2023

• But, again, the goal was a much-deserved reward for what was a fantastic night from Boston’s fourth line with Hathaway to the right of left wing A.J. Greer and center Tomas Nosek.

  Deployed for 7:52 of five-on-five time together, the Greer-Nosek-Hathaway held a staggering on-ice shot attempt advantage of 15-7, outshot Detroit 9-6, and scored the game-winning goal. All while posting an offensive-zone faceoff percentage of under 20 percent, meaning this was about as close to a complete three-zone effort as Montgomery and the Bruins could have asked for out of his fourth line.

  “I think we played to the identity that we want to,” Hathaway said of his line’s performance. “Nosey’s been great at the dot for a lot of games now and I thought he was great tonight, too. Greersy gets on every puck and forechecks really well, so we started making plays and then you know you can feed off that.

  “Our game is is moving through the zones, trying to get into the O-zone and I think we were able to wear ’em down a little bit tonight and you know getting the goal for the line was just kind of a cherry on top for us.”

  In addition to the goal, Hathaway finished Saturday’s victory with two shots, a blocked shot, and a team-leading five hits. All in just 9:01 of time on ice, too.