By: Tom Calautti | Follow me on Twitter/X @TCalauttis
Viktor Arvidsson recorded his fifth-career hat trick, and David Pastrnak added three assists as the Boston Bruins skated to a 6-3 victory over the vaunted Dallas Stars. The Black and Gold now have a firm grip on the Eastern Conference’s top wild card spot and positioned themselves well for a playoff berth. Here’s how it all went down:
The B’s got after Dallas early and often in this one, netting two first-period goals to jump out to a multi-goal lead. The first tally came just about halfway through the opening frame when Marat Khusnutdinov gathered a loose puck in the slot and whipped it through traffic to beat Dallas’ Jake Oettinger.
Boston doubled its lead late in the first when Jason Robertson took a tripping penalty at the 16:49 mark. The newly assembled top unit got the back half of this man advantage and capitalized just as the power-play clock expired, when David Pastrnak centered a puck from behind the goal line, which Arvidsson buried for his 22nd of the year.
“It’s good, I think we have fun together,” said Arvidsson when asked about the team’s confidence following their fourth consecutive victory. “We put a lot of emphasis on being hard on each other and really pushing each other. So I think in that regard we’re really happy with where we are.”
The Bruins surrendered two goals in the second and, despite outplaying Dallas, found themselves in a tie game heading into the third. That’s when Elias Lindholm decided to put his stamp on this game.
Just 13 seconds into the final frame, Jonathan Aspirot, Pastrnak, and Lindholm combined for a beautiful neutral zone break-in, which led to Lindholm rifling a wrister past Oettinger to regain the lead. The goal was Lindholm’s fifth in his last six games.
“I just try to keep it simple and try to be around the net a lot,” said Lindholm of his recent uptick in production. “I think our line has been playing some good hockey. Obviously, we have the top two lines that have been playing some good hockey and won us a lot of games, and so it’s time for us to step up, and I thought we’ve been doing a pretty good job.”
Lindholm would add an assist just about five minutes later when he won a slot battle and sent a puck back to Henri Jokiharju, who fired home his first career goal as a Bruin. Arvidsson would add two empty-netters to complete the hat trick, and Boston cruised to a 6-1 victory over the Stars.
The team has now won four straight games and is 7-1-2 in its last ten. Of those seven victories, four have come against teams currently inside the Eastern Conference playoff structure. After the game, Marco Sturm credited the difficulty of the schedule for strengthening his team and talked about how they’ve been in ‘playoff’ mode for quite some time.
“Everyone was talking about…the Bruins have the toughest (post-Olympic break) schedule,” said Sturm after the victory. “I believe that too. But what I liked about it is that we always seem to play better when we are playing against better teams. And for us, the playoffs started a long time ago.”
He added, “I think that’s the good thing about our team right now. We want to get challenged right now against really good hockey teams. And I think that kept us in the race, playing against really good teams.”
The Bruins will pack their bags and head down to Sunrise, FL, where they’ll take on the depleted Panthers to start a four-game road trip.
Game Notes:
- Viktor Arvidsson’s 5th career hat trick came on his daughter’s fifth birthday (s/o@TheSportsKase for that one).
- Pastrnak notched 3 assists which gives him 66 on the season. That beats his previous career high of 63 from the previous 2 seasons.
- Lindholm had 1-1-2 tonight and has registered 5-2-7 in his last 6 games.
- Pavel Zacha added an assist tonight and now has a 5-game point streak. Over that time he has 5-4-9.
- Charlie McAvoy added an assist tonight and increased his career best point total to 11-47-58.
Leave a Reply