Roy would pull Berra with more than three minutes remaining, and after a more decent scoring chances denied by Boston goalie Jonas Gustavsson, the Bruins would score on an empty net, putting the final nail in the Avalanche’s coffin. With Tuukka struggling at the start of the season, the Boston Bruins will hope Gustavsson can provide the spark they need to secure their first win of the season Wednesday against Colorado.
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The Boston third line would add two more to their names on the night, too, as Chris Kelly and Ryan Spooner scored the next two goals in a 6:02 span, and pushed the Boston lead to five. The score now was 5-2 in favor of Boston but the Colorado Avalanche were starting to make a move.
It wasn’t an out-of-this-world game by any stretch of the imagination – Gustavsson finished the night with 21 saves on 23 shots against – but Gustavsson had his moments where he stood tall when the B’s needed him to.
“I feel so sorry. I have to be better”.
“It’s nice to go to the net and bang home a rebound”, he said. “Once we got our legs going and started playing better, we just started making bad decisions with the puck and it ended up costing us against a good team like this”.
“I’m not happy. I’m not happy at all”, the Avalanche coach said. The importance of this club finally pushing themselves over the mental block of “strong starts, horrid finishes” is simply massive, although we won’t realize that until you see it on a consistent basis.
Miller gave Boston the early lead when his shot from the right point through traffic beat goalie Semyon Varlamov inside the far post at 5:49 of the first. Then just a little over 3 minutes later, Jimmy Hayes has a wrist shot goal at the 8:11 mark with an assist from Zdeno Chara and Colin Miller.
And on a night of firsts, Tyler Randell chose to join in on the fun with a tip-in goal 3:46 into the second period, good for Randell’s first goal and point of his National Hockey League career, and in doing so, became the first Bruins player to score in his National Hockey League debut since Blake Wheeler accomplished the feat in October 2008.
We’ve been dealt three really odd games to start the season: a massive choke job, a valiant come-from-behind win, and whatever this nonsense was tonight. “The first one always seems like the toughest one”. Hayes stole defenseman Tyson Barrie’s clearing pass at the blue line and fed Spooner in the slot.
The Avalanche will open the 3rd period with a 30 second power play.
Boston’s domination of the Avalanche was thorough throughout as they jumped out to a 2-0 after the first period and outshooting the Avalanche 9-5, a total nowhere near representative of how badly the Avs played.
Gustavsson was average in limited action with Detroit last season, posting a 3-3-1 record with a 2.56 GAA and.
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DENVER-You can rest easy, Bruins fans. The Avalanche scored 10 goals in their first two games, a franchise best since the move to Denver in 1995….
