The headline heading into last night’s Original Six matchup between the Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs sounded more like a wrestling match than a hockey game. ‘Kesselmania: Part Two.’
But after the Bruins defeated the Leafs 5-2 at the TD Garden, their second win in a week over their division rivals, and Kessel was again held scoreless, the Bruins showed that perhaps the spotlight should be on who is on the team now and not who used to don the Black and Gold.
‘I think our guys handled [Kessel’s return] well. You know, the Kesselmania and everything that was being thrown out there ‘-‘- I found it kind of amazing,’ Bruins coach Claude Julien said. ‘I thought we did a good job of not letting that stuff get to us, and we just focused on the game.’
Case in point: Mark Stuart. Playing in his 211th straight game, the defenseman did it all for the B’s in the win.
With 11:59 left in the first period, Stuart slammed home a one-timer from the blue line off a pass from fellow defenseman Johnny Boychuck for the night’s first goal. The goal was Stuart’s first point since he scored his first goal of the season against Phoenix on Oct. 17, a fact that caught Stuart’s attention after the game.
‘I’m not going to lie to you, [not scoring a point in a while is a big deal] for me,’ Stuart said. ‘I try to concentrate on defense first and playing well in my own end, but you know everyone wants to chip in offensively. It had been awhile [for me] so it definitely creeps into your mind.’
That being said, Stuart was still able to perform well at other aspects of the game, including fighting as he downed Leafs’ forward twice in the second period in separate instances.
In that second frame, the B’s were able to add two more goals to make it 3-0 in their favor. Thirty-five seconds into the period, defenseman Derek Morris put home a power-play goal with a similar blue-line slapshot to the one previously scored by Stuar.
Ten minutes and 35 seconds later, forward David Krejci stole the puck in the Boston defensive zone and took it to the opposite end of the ice where he deked past Toronto goalie Vesa Toskala for the goal.
The Leafs answered quickly after the second intermission, though, with goals by forward Mikhail Grabovski and Nikolai Kulemin. With 15:51 to go, what had once seemed in the bag was all but assured.
‘Three-goal leads are the worst,’ Bruins forward Mark Recchi said. ‘We were OK for two periods. In the third they came out and we weren’t ready for it.’
It was at that point that both Julien and Recchi seemingly took matters into their own hands.
First, Julien took a timeout immediately after Kulemin’s goal cut the lead to one.
‘We didn’t really react very well early in that period,’ Julien said. ‘First shift, two guys went right through our center and our winger, and they got the momentum. So [the timeout] was about settling us down and making sure we didn’t panic there.’
And panic the Bruins did not for the rest of the game. Over the next 12 minutes, the score remained at 3-2 until a Rob Blake high-sticking penalty gave the B’s a man advantage. During that power play, after a ten-second period that saw Boston pepper three shots on Toskala, Recchi was finally able to tickle the twine from the crease off a centering shot from the right corner by forward Blake Wheeler to stretch the lead to two.’ Recchi added an empty-netter in the final minute to end it, 5-2 B’s.
Tuuka Rask was solid between the pipes for the B’s, making 32 saves on the night including a nice kick save on a Tomas Kaberle shot from the right faceoff circle that led to Krejci’s breakaway opportunity in the second.
As for Kessel, he did not register a single point for the second straight game against his former employer and got off only two shots on the night.
Game Notes: Stuart participated in a pregame ceremony that honored a company of soldiers that carried a Bruins flag throughout their seven-month tour in Iraq. Stuart accepted the flag on behalf of the Bruins and shook the hands of each soldier amidst a standing ovation from the Garden crowd . . . Forward Byron Bitz did not even make it to the game Thursday as he was told to stay home due to illness. He left the morning practice early with nausea . . . The win was Boston’s seventh consecutive over Toronto. The last loss the Bruins suffered to the Leafs came in a 4-2 loss at home on Oct. 23, 2008.
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