Boston Bruins
“[It’s] not a surprise that we came up with a win because our mindset was there and focused today. … Mindset can do magical things.”
Less than 24 hours after his team was run off the ice in Ottawa, a clean slate was the last thing Marco Sturm wanted to harp on Tuesday.
“I think we all should feel embarrassed by what happened yesterday,” Sturm said before facing the Islanders. “I’m not going to sit here and just move on through the next one. I’m a competitor; my guys in my room are very competitive. We all take a lot of pride in games like that. We just want to be better and show a response today.”
It wasn’t pretty. But Boston’s first-year coach eventually received what he was looking for at TD Garden.
Trailing the Islanders by two goals after the opening 20 minutes of play Tuesday, the Bruins surged back via a three-goal salvo in under four minutes in the second period — propelling Boston to a 5-2 win.
Five different skaters scored for the Bruins (5-7-0), while Bruins goaltender Joonas Korpisalo turned aside 33 of 35 shots in the win, including all 15 in the third period.
“You could feel the energy in the room after the first [period]. We knew we can still win this game,” David Pastrnak said. “The belief was there, the positivity after the first period was great. So [it’s] not a surprise that we came out with a win because our mind-set was there and focused today. . . . Mind-set can do magical things.”
Fresh off of Monday’s blowout, the return of Hampus Lindholm to the Bruins’ blue line after a five-game absence offered optimism that Boston’s malleable defensive structure was due to regain some rigidity.
That initial optimism dissipated in short order, with a Bruins defensive unit — operating with Mason Lohrei designated as a healthy scratch — once again shredded before many had planted themselves into the lower bowl.
As Lindholm snapped a shot high above Islanders goalie Ilya Sorokin and into glass, New York countered. Bo Horvat fired home a puck on the resulting three-on-two to give the visitors the lead just 1:08 into the contest.
New York doubled its lead less than four minutes later during a lengthy delayed-penalty sequence. From the left corner, Mathew Barzel picked out Kyle Palmieri cutting backdoor to the net for a 2-0 lead at 4:52.
While Boston found itself on the ropes in the defensive zone, Sturm’s squad also wasn’t landing many punches down the other end of the ice.
After putting two shots on Sorokin in the opening 50 seconds, the Bruins managed to generate just two more over the final 19:10 of the opening period.
Despite the sluggish start, Sturm was actually encouraged by what he saw as his team made its way off the ice.
“Was it the start we wanted? No,” Sturm said. “But I felt good for some reason, because the guys were dialed in. And I could sense that they gave me everything they had in the first period. The other guys were just quicker and faster than us.
“And the message was, we just saw that script. We’ve just been through it with Colorado [on Saturday]. They did the same thing, and we stuck with it in the second period. And that’s exactly what happened.”
A pair of Islanders penalties less than three minutes apart early in the second allowed Boston to shift its fortunes.
Boston scored on its second power-play bid at 3:57, with Elias Lindholm snapping home a puck from the right circle off a tic-tac-toe sequence engineered by David Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha.
A revamped top line — with Marat Khusnutdinov skating in place of Morgan Geekie alongside Lindholm and Pastrnak — secured the equalizer just 2:52 later.
Shortly after Khusnutdinov ferried the puck through the neutral zone and across the offensive blue line, Hampus Lindholm’s playmaking prowess was put on display. Skating up into the left circle with the puck on his stick, Lindholm dished a slap-pass across the slot to Pastrnak, who sent the puck through Sorokin’s five-hole to knot the score at 2.
“He’s just a presence out there that we really missed,” Sturm said of Lindholm, who had missed eight of the last nine games with a lower-body injury.
Charlie McAvoy joined in Boston’s aggressive play from the blue line less than a minute later.
With plenty of open ice in front of him, McAvoy skated in from the left circle and peppered in a puck toward a mass of skaters down low — with the attempt ricocheting off of Mikey Eyssimont and past Sorokin to give Boston its first lead of the evening.
Boston’s penalty-kill unit — fresh off of relinquishing four power-play goals on Monday for the first time since October 2018 — was put to the test once again on Tuesday after Hampus Lindholm received a double-minor for a high stick on Palmieri.
But the Bruins’ shorthanded crew stood tall, keeping the Islanders at bay both during Lindholm’s four-minute stint in the penalty box and a subsequent hooking call against Pastrnak. The penalty kill was a perfect 5 for 5.
Boston manufactured some much-needed breathing room on the power play in the third period, with Morgan Geekie uncorking a one-timer for his eighth goal of the year — and his fifth straight game with a tally.
“He has everything to score 50 in this league,” Pastrnak said of Geekie. “I keep telling him. . . . He’s gonna get it one day. The shot that he has, it’s amazing. It’s the best on our team.”
Fraser Minten iced the game with an empty-net goal at 16:36 — the byproduct of Eyssimont stealing the puck from Barzal at the blue line and springing the youngster for a clear path to the net.
The win might not fully absolve Monday’s debacle. But Sturm was heartened by his team’s willingness to get itself off the mat just a day later.
“I was just looking forward to today because I knew these guys were going to respond,” he said. “I knew it. I think we were all disappointed last night. Not just me, my players, too. And I could tell already before the game, we had a bunch of meetings — I could tell these guys were ready to go.”
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