COLUMBUS -- GOLD STAR: Brad Marchand thoroughly dominated the final 40 minutes of the hockey game with his team down, and in need of some kind of spark. Marchand got to work with David Backes and David Pastrnak, and those three players accounted for all six of the goals in a badly needed win for the Black and Gold. With his buddy Patrice Bergeron out of the lineup, Marchand accounted for two goals, five points and a plus-5 rating while generating 11 shot attempts in his 17:12 of ice time. The biggest goal was very clearly the game-winner when he followed up David Pastrnak’s partial breakaway, and then fired into the vacated net for the game-winner. Even when he wasn’t actually scoring the goal, energy and effort level Marchand was putting into every shift helped elevate that line to some pretty otherworldly things in the final 40 minutes of that game.
BLACK EYE: Brandon Dubinsky lost the battle and the war for the Columbus Blue Jackets as his line failed in their attempts to clamp down the Bergeron-Backes-Pastrnak line, and he finished a minus-5 with just a couple of shots on net in a largely ineffective performance. He was decent in the face-off circle and was involved physically while making five hits, but clearly was making way too many mistakes with too many dangerous players on the ice. It looks like John Tortorella is going to have to go back to the drawing board with his personnel when it comes to stopping other team’s best players, and collapsing late in the game.
TURNING POINT: The Bruins could have been in a world of hurt after the opening 20 minutes when they fell behind by a 2-0 score, but that’s when Brad Marchand went to work with linemates David Backes and David Pastrnak. Pastrnak scored the first goal on a play engineered by Brad Marchand when he picked off a Zach Werenski pass from behind the Columbus net, and that gave the Bruins some life once they were on the board. Sure they backslid a little bit when Seth Jones scored again to give Columbus a two-goal cushion, but by that point the B’s top forward line was all systems go with No. 63 and Co. dominating every time they hopped over the boards.
HONORABLE MENTION: David Pastrnak was on the ice for every single one of Boston’s goals, finished with a career-high plus-6 rating and scored two goals to go along with four points and a team-high eight shots on net. He was a game-breaking force offensively along with Marchand and Backes, and defensively he was hustling to the back-check, winning battles in areas of the ice where he surrendered the puck last season and “playing the right way” in his own words. It’s going to be a big season for the 20-year-old Pastrnak, and it will also be a huge season for the B’s as a hockey club if he can continue to perform with the all-around excellence he showed on opening night against the Blue Jackets. This is a player that’s about to emerge on the NHL scene in a big way.
BY THE NUMBERS: 20:57 -- the big number of ice time for Colin Miller in his first game of the season as both he and John-Michael Liles played solid games, and Miller also got a couple of shifts with Zdeno Chara when Brandon Carlo was looking a little nervous early in the game.
QUOTE TO NOTE: "It was a good way to start the year. I think the big takeaway from tonight is the character we showed. It's fun when you come back." -- Brad Marchand, on the comeback win and the fashion in which the Bruins came back from a 2-0 deficit in Columbus.