|
Marchand takes center stage; Time to stick with Sway? |
|
|
 |
Ty Anderson
 Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • RSS
• Archive
• CONTACT
|
|
|
If the Bruins were going to avoid going 2-1 in their first-round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs, it was going to take something big from their talents.
Given the way that Auston Matthews dominated Game 2, you just felt like the Bruins had to have something from one of their big guns up front to be able to hang with this Maple Leaf squad and regain the series lead.
And sure, enough, it was captain Brad Marchand who helped drag the Bruins kicking and screaming to a 2-1 series lead with a two-goal effort, and a night that saw him play a significant factor on all four goals in a 4-2 victory.
“Morning skate, I saw the way we were and I saw the way our captain was, and I just knew we were going to have a good game,” Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery said after the win. “Didn’t know if we were gonna win, because the Leafs are a good hockey team. But I knew we were coming to play.”
Marchand assisted on the go-ahead power-play goal in the third period, he scored what proved to be the game-winning goal just 28 seconds after Tyler Bertuzzi tied things up, and even put the dagger in the back of the Toronto cage with an empty-net goal with less than a minute remaining in the game.
But it was what Marchand did on Boston’s first goal of the evening that left the Maple Leafs a bit, well, agitated by the Black and Gold’s captain.
In what's been a brewing battle all series long, Bertuzzi and Marchand were tied up, and neither appeared willing to relent. After a few minor bumps, Marchand decided to put his stick in Bertuzzi's skate blade, and Bertuzzi went down. And as all of this went on, the Bruins' Trent Frederic charged into the attacking zone and ripped a low-percentage look through the Maple Leafs' Ilya Samsonov for Boston's first goal of the evening.
“He gets calls,” Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said of Marchand. “It’s unbelievable, actually, how it goes, you know? We’ve got to play through that stuff. I don’t think there’s another player in this series who gets away with taking out Bertuzzi’s legs the way that he does. There’s not one other player in this series that gets away with that. But he does.
“It’s an art, and he’s elite at it.”
Of course, Keefe could be talking about Marchand ‘getting away’ with penalties, but it’s also worth noting that Marchand did not draw any sort of penalty in Boston’s Game 3 victory. In fact, the Maple Leafs had a run of four straight penalty calls that went their way, and finished the game with five power-play opportunities compared to just three for the Bruins (and with Boston's third drawn with just over a minute remaining in the game).
The Maple Leafs also landed just three shots on Jeremy Swayman’s cage over the course of their five power-play opportunities.
But Keefe wasn’t the only Maple Leaf complaining about No. 63 after the loss.
“He wants to get under our skin and influence the refs, so I think we’ve just got to be composed and not kind of get into that bullshit,” the Leafs’ Matthew Knies said after the loss. “Just play hard and make him (less) effective.”
Again, it is worth mentioning that Marchand did not draw a single penalty in the winning effort.
“You got to recognize he’s a world-class player both in ability and how he plays with the gamesmanship and everything,” Keefe said of Marchand. “It’s world-class.”
The great irony here is that what Keefe is doing could be described as gamesmanship. It’s not too dissimilar from what then-Blues head coach Craig Berube did during the 2019 Stanley Cup Final when he openly complained about the penalties, or what Barry Trotz did regarding Patrice Bergeron and his alleged ‘cheating’ on faceoffs during the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
At the same time, however, there’s no denying that the Maple Leafs have also played right into Marchand’s hands. Max Domi has had a hair across his ass for Marchand throughout the first three games of this series, and Bertuzzi has yet to skate away from any sort of confrontation with Marchand. Free will does exist for these players, and it’s perhaps the best way to minimize the impact an emotionally-driven talent such as Marchand has on this series.
Instead, the Leafs appeared to wake Marchand up in Game 3, and are now complaining about the impact it can have on this series.
Swayman thrives once again
While I am beginning to believe that Montgomery tipped his hand last month when he talked about how a proverbial playoff rotation would play (he said a rotation would see the Bruins rotate through four games and the Bruins have currently rotated through three), I can't help but feel like Jeremy Swayman has given the Bruins a more than legitimate to reconsider and simply ride the hot goaltender.
In what was his second start of the series after stopping 35-of-36 in Game 1, Swayman once again thrived, this time with a 28-of-30 line in the B's cage. Not to mention that the second and final goal Swayman allowed was a double-deflection that bounced off Hampus Lindholm and through him, so you can't even crush him for giving that one up.
Instead, Swayman has looked beyond dialed in through this series. NaturalStatTrick.com has him credited with 22 saves on 25 high-danger shots thrown his way during all-situational play, and Swayman's year-to-date against the Maple Leafs now includes a perfect 5-0-0 record and a save percentage of .957.
Oh, and he's made it clear that he wants to keep going.
The 25-year-old Swayman has also been able to put forth some strong results in the second start when given consecutive starts this season (though he hasn't done it since mid-February), with five wins and a .925 save percentage in six such starts.
Join the Discussion:
»