Here are Joe Haggerty's talking points after the Boston Bruins' 3-0 win over the St. Louis Blues at the TD Garden on Saturday night.
GOLD STAR: David Pastrnak struggled in the Stanley Cup Final while pretty obviously battling with his thumb injury and at times shrank against the physicality of the Blues during the seven game series last June. He pretty clearly didn’t want to shoot the puck in that series and that was very unlike the Pastrnak that everybody knows. Certainly, it wasn’t the finest hour for him or for the other members of the Perfection Line when they came up short for the Cup. So Pastrnak got some measure of revenge on Saturday night as he scored a sizzling one-time power play goal in the first period to put the Bruins on the board and put up eight shot attempts in 17:33 of ice time against the Blues team that tormented him last spring. He had three giveaways and certainly wasn’t perfect in the game, but his power play goal got the ball rolling for the Black and Gold.
BLACK EYE: Brayden Schenn was a solid player for the Blues in the Stanley Cup Final and was a difference-maker for St. Louis as a hard-nosed veteran center. But aside from jumping Zdeno Chara after he blasted Oskar Sundqvist with a massive hit in the first shift of the first period, he did absolutely nothing in the rematch against the Bruins. Schenn had three giveaways and was went 3-for-9 in the face-off circle while failing to register a shot on net or a hit in 18:12 of ice time. For a player like Schenn to not have either a hit or a shot on net, that is some serious ghost-like activity for a Blues player in a big game against the Bruins.
TURNING POINT: For the Bruins it was the second period with a 1-0 lead and a solid game plan thus far. Midway through the period Matt Grzelcyk and Anders Bjork broke through with Bjork snapping a shot from the face-off circle past Jordan Binnington that gave the Bruins a two-goal lead and put them in the drivers’ seat against a St. Louis team that was missing their biggest offensive gun in Vladimir Tarasenko. Once the Bruins were up by two goals it felt like things were out of reach for the undermanned Blues, and it felt like the secondary scoring from the Bruins makeshift third line once again made all the difference against a pretty good team.
HONORABLE MENTION: Tuukka Rask wasn’t a strong, dominant force in the Game 7 loss to the St. Louis Blues four months ago despite a stellar overall playoff. He was extremely good this time around with 26 saves in his second shutout of the season and continues to put together a great month of October for a notoriously slow-starting goaltender. Rask was arguably at his best in the third period while stopping 10 shots as the B’s were protecting a two-goal lead, but he was also quick to credit a shutdown defensive effort from the players in front of him throughout the game. Rask now leads the NHL with a 1.48 goals against average and a .952 save percentage.
BY THE NUMBERS: 5 – the number of consecutive games where David Pastrnak has a goal, which is a career-high for the 23-year-old right winger and extends to an eight game point streak for No. 88.
QUOTE TO NOTE: “Unless they brought the Cup here for this game I don’t think it has anything to do with [the Stanley Cup Final]. It’s a different year and different teams. But it was two good teams and a great Saturday night game.” –Tuukka Rask, obviously not feeling all of the Stanley Cup Final rematch talk in the Bruins and Blues battle.
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