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Brad Marchand injury overshadows Game 3 loss |
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Ty Anderson
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Already down 2-1 in their second-round series with the Panthers, the Bruins may very well have to soldier on without captain Brad Marchand available for Sunday’s Game 4 at TD Garden.
Ruled out of action — termed ‘unlikely to return’ — after two periods of play in Friday’s 6-2 loss, Marchand was not on the ice for Saturday’s practice at Brighton’s Warrior Ice Arena, and B’s head coach Jim Montgomery’s update on team’s leading scorer did not sound encouraging.
“Upper-body, day-to-day,” Montgomery said when asked for a Marchand update.
Hit hard (and popped in the face on the hit) by the Panthers’ Sam Bennett early in the first period of play, the 5-foot-9 Marchand would remain in action for the remainder of the first period and all of the second period, but did not look like his normal self before being lifted from the game.
And like most, Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery didn’t see exactly what happened on the center ice collision that left Marchand with wobbly legs and in some serious discomfort on the B’s bench. But upon seeing subsequent replays, Montgomery was one unhappy bench boss.
“There’s a history there with Bennett,” Montgomery began. “A good, hard player. But there’s clearly evidence of what went on. And people can say it wasn’t intentional, [but] we have our view of it.”
When asked to clarify the 'history' part of his answer and whether that was with the Bruins or in general, Montgomery said "in his career." To Montgomery's point there, this Bennett punch was strikingly similar to the one Bennett landed on the Maple Leafs' Matthew Knies in their second-round series last year.
Shockingly, Panthers head coach Paul Maurice did not agree with the assessment.
“No, and I don’t think most of you would either,” Maurice said when asked about seeing a Bennett punch on the incident between the two. “It was just a collision. In a perfect world, every team has everybody healthy. Nobody likes to see anybody hurt.”
With Marchand unavailable for Saturday’s skate, the Bruins essentially threw their lines into a blender and pressed ‘max power’ in what could be a sign of what’s to come on Sunday.
Up top, the Bruins put Jake DeBrusk and Morgan Geekie to the left of David Pastrnak on what you would consider Boston’s top line or the closest thing they would have to a top line in the now. Pavel Zacha, meanwhile, moved back to center and on a line with James van Riemsdyk and Justin Brazeau on the wings, while Danton Heinen moved to the left of the Charlie Coyle and Trent Frederic combination.
“Jake was being intense on pucks, coming up with loose pucks as [Pastrnak] was, and, Geekie was working, so I just put those three guys together,” Montgomery said of his switch-up. “It just happened kind of organically because [Marchand] wasn’t there.”
And if Marchand is indeed out tomorrow, the task in front of the B’s only gets taller, but it’s one that Coyle hopes brings the best out of the Black and Gold with the series still within reach.
“You want everyone to be healthy and everyone chip in, but that’s an opportunity for guys to step up, and we can do that,” Coyle said of potentially playing without Marchand. “And I think you saw Toronto do that against us earlier with [Auston] Matthews out. They came together and threw together a couple of good games without him. So it’s just an opportunity for us, and I think you’ll see guys take on more responsibility and opportunity and rise to that occasion.
"We do it together, and we want to play for guys who are not in the lineup and wish they could be out there in the lineup. And, that’s why we play out here. We play for each other, and that’s something we want to do tomorrow.”
Bruins' Lauko left frustrated after third-period penalty proves costly
With his team down by three and in need of a jolt, Bruins winger Jakub Lauko won a foot race to a 50-50 puck against the Panthers’ Aaron Ekblad and barreled down towards Sergei Bobrovsky’s crease.
But it was Lauko himself, not the puck, that ultimately crashed into Bobrovsky’s cage, and with significant help from Ekblad’s grip on Lauko on the way to the high-impact collision. The referee’s arm went up and appeared to indicate that the Bruins were going to get a power-play opportunity out of the crash, but in what was a theme in a frustrating Game 3 loss, those cheers turned to thunderous boos when it was deemed that Lauko was going to be the one going to the box.
And, of course, the Panthers would score on the ensuing power play and by all means put this game to bed at 4-0, though the Bruins put up a late fight and at one point cut the deficit to two. It was a truly game-changing call in the sense that it zapped any hope out of Boston making things truly interesting, and one that left Lauko wondering what he could’ve done differently on that play.
“I don’t know if I even can say something about it,” Lauko said after the loss. “I don’t know what was the rule on this particular play. But I don’t have much room to avoid the goalie, to be honest.
“I was trying to get to the net and just ended [crashing] up into the goalie. I felt that [Ekblad] was holding me and pushing me and pushing me inside. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to avoid it.”
Lauko did his part to make up for his penalty by scoring Boston’s first goal of the evening in his first shift after the penalty and Florida power-play goal. But the bitterness of the goal against was still there after the loss, especially when you consider how a non-call (or even a B’s power-play opportunity there, which, again, seemed to be the original ruling) could’ve changed things from a momentum standpoint and made Boston’s late-game push one that saw them looking for just one goal and not two.
“Those sort of things are kind of like hard to accept,” Lauko admitted. “But, you know, that’s part of the game, and we need to play through it.”
The Bruins enter Game 4 having taken 13 minor penalties compared to Florida’s seven through the first three games of this second-round series.
Everything else
- Penalties really shouldn't be a talking point when the Bruins have had their absolute doors blown off from a territorial standpoint over the last two games, but they have become one with the word that the NHL had put both the Bruins and Panthers on notice and that the series would be "heavily scrutinized" following the Game 2 gongshow.
But, as always, this is where I'll tell you that two things can be true at once: Yes, the B's have played like absolute garbage in these late two games. But yes, the referees have been awful at the very best, and have frequently lost control of the game in the name of hyper-managing said game. Honestly, that Lauko penalty felt like an example of the officials trying to 'cool' things down when, to be honest, it didn't seem like message-sending from Lauko.
There's simply no way you're convincing me that a team that took the second-most penalties during the regular season and 24 in a five-game series against the Lightning have suddenly become this clean and are committing half as many infractions as the Bruins.
We have an 87-game data sheet to indicate otherwise.
But, again, none of that matters if the Bruins continue to play this poorly.
- The Bruins need Charlie McAvoy to get going here. I thought he got a little bit better as Game 3 went on, and he really became much more of a physical force in the third period of that losing effort, but it really feels like McAvoy's ability to make puck plays has gone out the window of late. The Bruins cannot afford that with No. 63 out of action.
- Sergei Bobrovsky has posted an .881 save percentage through the first three games of this series. I think the Bruins can make his life more difficult than they have through three games.
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