If the Bruins didn’t know they were in for a battle with the New York Islanders, then they do now.
After the B’s hit the Islanders with a wallop of punch in erasing a two-goal third period deficit that had the Garden roaring, Casey Cizikas scored with 5:12 left in the first overtime to lift the New York Islanders to a 4-3 victory in Game 2 and even the East Division series with the Bruins at 1-1 on Monday night.
The series shifts to Long Island for Game 3 on Thursday. The Isles now have home ice advantage and, considering the B’s have not won in Nassau Coliseum in four tries this year, that is not the most comfortable development for them.
It was a night of terrible bounces for the B’s and that’s how it ended. Jeremy Lauzon, who had a New York power-play goal go off his skate in the second period, fired a hot pass into the middle of the ice that went off Charlie Coyle’s skate and gave Cizikas a clean breakaway. He buried his chance over Tuukka Rask’s blocker to nail down the win and change the complexion of this series.
Coach Bruce Cassidy called the Lauzon decision “ill-advised” because his defense partner Charlie McAvoy was still working his way back up to the right point after a foray deep into the zone.
“His partner wasn’t there. He just has to look. You have to survey the ice. Any time you have the puck, it’s a fluid game. There are set plays we run, but there has to be player there, so you have to look and usually you look first,” said Cassidy. “That’s some of the learning curve for some of the younger guys. Take a look befotre the puck gets to you, recognize what’s going on. Because his partner wasn’t there, he was recovering back. So (Coyle) was trying to stay high in his spot, so obviously the cross-ice pass wouldn’t have been there in that particular case…That’s one that had to go back down the wall or toward the net. At the end of the day, you learn from it.”
While Cassidy was coldly analytical on the final play, Brad Marchand tried to buck up the young defenseman.
“(Expletive) happens,” said Marchand. “(Lauzon) is a great player for this team. He competes very hard. He’s out there every night working his butt off for this group. We all make mistakes. We’ve all been there. It’s tough when it happens to you. But we’re going to bounce back. It’s not the end of the world. It’s 1-1 and we just have to work for the next one. It’s all about how we regroup in here and move forward. That’s the thing about the playoffs. You have to be like an elephant, have a quick memory and just worry about the next day.”
The Cizikas winner wiped out a spirited comeback by the B’s.
After giving up three goals in the second period to trail 3-1, Patrice Bergeron got the B’s back to within a goal at 10:34 of the third. After a long, grinding shift, Marchand fed Bergeron in the high slot and the captain beat Semyon Varlamov over the blocker.
Then, with 5:21 left in regulation, the entire Bruins bench began banging their sticks as they saw the Islanders had an extra man on the ice and the officials caught it.
On the advantage, Marchand tied it up with 4:54 left in the third. After making an exchange with McAvoy on the left wing, Marchand walked into the left circle and snapped a shot that beat Varlamov to the glove side.
Near disaster struck with 4:10 left in the third when Mike Reilly’s stick broke at the left point and he played the puck with it. He got nailed for the two-minute infraction, but the B’s were able to kill it off and the teams went to the OT.
The B’s had their chances to win it there. The best one came when David Krejci gave Taylor Hall a great rebound off Varlamov’s pads, but Varlamov recovered in time to make a great stop on Hall’s fluttering backhander. Varlamov made six saves in the OT and 39 in all.
“They’re a good hockey team and we knew they were going to have their pushes,” Coyle said. “We had some bad bounces but that’s hockey.”
With Craig Smith on the sidelines because of a lower body injury, Cassidy shuffled his second and third lines, moving Jake DeBrusk up to take Smith’s place on the second line with Krejci and inserting Karson Kuhlman into the lineup, stationing him on the Coyle line.
And it was the Coyle line that put the B’s up 1-0 just 2:38 in on the first shot of the game.
Kuhlman mushed a puck out of he Bruins’ zone at the blue line and got it over to Nick Ritchie in the neutral zone. Ritchie in turn fed it up to Coyle, who did the rest. He carried the puck down the left side on his off wing, turned defenseman Nick Leddy and then cut to his forehand on a power move, tucking it past Varlamov.
The B’s had the only power play of the period, but should have had another one when Leddy elbowed Sean Kuraly after a Kuraly shot. Kuraly was sprawled out in the middle of the Islander zone and would need some attention, but there was no call. After a brief trip to the dressing room, Kuraly returned to the game before the period was out.
Despite the early Bruins goal, the Isles started to establish their game midway through the first and grabbed the game by the throat with three goals in the second period. The Bruins and their star from Game 1 got them started.
One penalty the refs did not miss was a goaltender interference on David Pastrnak at 5:19 of the second period. It would have been difficult to do so. The Bruins winger, coming off a hat trick in Game 1 but yet to get a shot on net by that point, skated straight into Varlamov and was sent to the box for interference.
Then late in what was looking like a good kill, the Isles tied it up on a fortunate bounce for them. Josh Bailey tried to make a cross-ice pass that deflected off Lauzon’s skate and between Rask’s pads to make it 1-1 at 6:59.
That was the start of a disastrous 20 minutes for the home team.
The Isles took the lead at 11:00. Leddy missed the net on a good chance from the slot but it bounced off the end boards and came right to Kyle Palmieri at the left side of the net. It had appeared Rask got back in time to protect his short side, but Palmieri kept at it and jammed it home between Rask’s pads.
Then the refs gave the fans something to gripe about. Brandon Carlo and Leo Komarov got into a pushing and shoving match after the whistle, standard stuff for a regular season game, never mind the playoffs. But Carlo was the only player sent to the box by referee Gord Dwyer and the Isles capitalized.
Cassidy termed the call “questionable.”
“I’m not sure how (Carlo) got singled out on that one,” said Cassidy.
On the power-play, Anthony Beauvillier sent a deft pass through the crease to Jean-Gabriel Pageau and he buried it into the vacant net at 17:21.
That gave the Isles a two-goal lead going into the third period with Varlamov looking a lot like the Vezina candidate he’d been all year.
The B’s were able to nick him for two in the third to tie it, but the Isles would have one more big break coming their way in overtime.
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June 01, 2021 at 10:09AM
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Bruins lose 4-3 in OT, Islanders tie series - Boston Herald
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