GOLD STAR: A hat trick for former Providence College player Brandon Tanev, who also was a participant in Bruins development camp as an undrafted prospect if my memory serves me correctly. A couple of the goals were just strong, hard-working strikes with Tanev whacking away for second and third effort chances on Winnipeg’s first goal, and then a third period wraparound goal where he took advantage of a misconnect between Anton Khudobin and Nick Holden on an outlet pass. All in all Tanev finished with the three goals and five shots on net in his 13:13 of ice time and plus-3 rating while providing most of the offense for a Jets team that’s already overloaded with offensive stars. That much of the offensive damage for Tanev came against Boston’s top forward line was also pretty impressive when it was all said and done. Believe it or not, those were only Tanev’s fifth, sixth and seventh goals of the season for the Jets.
BLACK EYE: A tough night for Adam McQuaid, who only ended up playing 12 minutes and some change in a game where the Bruins lost Matt Grzelcyk to an injury at the end of the second period. McQuaid finished a minus-1 with three giveaways during his time on the ice, and both the Bruins stay-at-home D-man and Nick Holden both struggles for Boston against a Winnipeg team that was working hard to squeeze them on the fore-check. McQuaid is going to need to be better, however, as the Bruins may be down another defensemen in Grzelcyk and are going to need better performances from the rest of their D-corps while perhaps getting Zdeno Chara and/or Charlie McAvoy back for Thursday night’s game against Tampa Bay.
TURNING POINT: The turning point came early in the game when the Winnipeg Jets were handed a goal by the officials in the first period. Brandon Tanev was whacking and hacking at a puck around the Boston net after he was hit with the puck, and he got the puck to the goal line as it looked like Anton Khudobin scooped up the puck before it was a score. The referee closest to the Boston net, Garrett Rank, never signaled goal at the net as he was on the opposite side of the play, and he only indicated it was a goal after conferring with the rest of the referee crew that was far away from the net at the time of the actual play. So it was a goal despite no evidence on video that it crossed over the goal line, and that meant there was going to be no clear evidence that it could be overturned during video review. It wasn’t and it became a play where a bad goal was called a goal on the ice, and the NHL had no way to wipe it off the board after the fact. It was no fault of the NHL’s situation room, but was an instance where the refs screwed it up on the ice and it cost the Bruins an important goal.
HONORABLE MENTION: Torey Krug played 26:28 of ice time with Matt Grzelcyk going down at the end of the second period, finished with a goal and two points and had seven shot attempts in an active game for the Black and Gold. It was Krug that helped engineer the third period comeback for the point that the Bruins did get, and scored the game-tying power play goal after feeding David Pastrnak for the one-timer on Boston’s third goal of the game. Krug has really stepped up his play over the last month with both Zdeno Chara and Charlie McAvoy out of the lineup, and that continued on Tuesday night against the Jets in a game where the Bruins clearly could have taken their foot off the gas pedal in the third period. Krug did not and the Bruins did not, and that’s a credit to the attitude that they’ve taken all season long.
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BY THE NUMBERS: 21 – the number of points out of a possible 28 points that the Bruins have piled up during an extremely difficult month of March where the grueling schedule was supposed to take a chunk out of them. Not so much.
QUOTE TO NOTE: “It should be a doozy.” –Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy to NESN on the Thursday night showdown between the Bruins and Lightning with the B’s just a point behind the Bolts for first place in the Atlantic Division.