Patrice Bergeron celebrated the birth of his son on Wednesday morning and had a goal and an assist later that night, but the Bruins saw a two-goal lead evaporate in the third period en route to a 5-4 overtime loss to Philadelphia.Bergeron has scored three goals and set up two others in his last two games overall and tallied twice in three meetings with New York last season.
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Though the Boston Bruins have done their best work on the road this season, their first visit to Barclays Center may be their toughest challenge yet.
Remarkably, the Islanders had just eight shots-on-goal over the final two periods, and were charged with 14 giveaways in the game. Johnny Boychuk sent the puck toward the net from the right side and Cizikas skated across in front of the goal with his back to the goalie and deflected the puck between his skates past Gustavsson. Oddsmakers have a total of 5.5 tabbed on the game. “So it’s a amusing game”.
A sizable contingent of fans clad in black and gold accounted for most of the noise as Islanders fans in the announced crowd of 13,113 cheered loudest when members of the National League champion New York Mets were shown watching the game from seats near the ice.
“Once we played harder and started managing the puck better, we played less in our own end”, said Claude Julien. “When we scored those goals, seemed to have a lot of them. Certainly helps the visiting team feel a lot better”.
The night actually started fairly well for the Bruins, who grabbed the early lead on Connolly’s goal 9:51 in.
“The second goal was my fault”, said Spooner.
Both goals were at least partially the result of sloppiness by the Islanders.
The three stars of the game were Joonas Kemppainen, Ryan Spooner and Casey Cizikas.
The problem remains their defense and goaltending, as the team sits 29th out of 30 teams in Goals Allowed on the year. Every time we have a third forward high, they turn pucks over and we get scoring chances. “It’s going to lead to more zone time for the opposition”.
Center David Krejci scored an empty-netter with 2:25 left as the Bruins (3-3-1) won for the third time in four games (3-0-1) and improved to 3-0-0 on the road. “We had a tough start to the season, but we’re coming on here and we’re starting to play a little better”.
Jonas Gustavsson is 2-0 as a Bruins goaltender and is playing a lot better than Rask. “A win is always nice”. Jaroslav Halak stopped 21 shots while taking his first loss after winning his first two starts.
The Boston Bruins have had the biggest turnover in players in the club’s recent memory. The Islanders scratched RW Steve Bernier, G Thomas Greiss and D Brian Strait….
They were down 2-1 after the first 20 minutes of play, and a talented, red-hot Islanders bunch had outshot them by an 18-8 margin while dominating the pace and possession game the Bruins always try to control. That includes forechecking, which the B’s did exceptionally well in the second and third periods in Brooklyn.
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Matt Beleskey, out the last two games because of an upper-body injury, practiced Saturday with Chris Kelly and Jimmy Hayes.
