Boston Bruins: B’s easily take down New York Islanders, 6-1.
Sep 23, 2014; Montreal, Quebec, CAN; Boston Bruins center
Ryan Spooner(51) celebrates his goal against Montreal Canadiens with teammates during the first period at Bell Centre. Mandatory Credit: Jean-Yves Ahern-USA TODAY Sports
The Boston Bruins brought back a few of their AHL players for last night’s game against the New York Islanders. Providence forwards Justin Florek, Seth Griffith, Alexander Khokhlachev and Ryan Spooner, and baby B’s defensemen Chris Breen and Zach Trotman made the trip with the Black and Gold as they played in Webster Arena. The draw of the B’s brought a lot of the Black and Gold faithful, and the arena was four short of setting an all time attendence record.
Ryan Spooner was shifted from center to left wing for last night’s game, and he excelled in that position. Spooner put in two goals for Boston against a mostly AHL team put up by the Islanders. He scored first with the assistance of Zach Trotman, and later in the third when Milan Lucic fed him the puck and Spooner’s backhanded shot when past Chad Johnson.(Johnson, who stopped 19 of 25 last night (.760%), recieved little help from the Islanders in the defensive zone last night.) At that point, it was 4-1 and the rout was on in Bridgeport.
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Daniel Paille scored the Bruins’ fifth goal 12:54 into the third period. Reilly Smith finished the scoring with an incredible individual effort with two minutes left in the game. iced the game at 18:09.
“I got a couple of nice plays and finished them off so that was good, but that’s definitely a change out there, on the left side, so I just need to improve on that,” said Spooner postgame.
Spooner looked comfortable in that position, and it may be a game changer for him as the Bruins go into the regular season on October 8th. The Bruins already have a solid core of centers on their squad. Spooner’s strong performance on the wing may earn him a shot of getting back on the Boston roster.
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Claude Julien certainly thought well of his performance. The coach talked about Spooner’s move to wing and the reasoning behind it after the 6-1 win.
“Again, you know our situation at center right? So you know, you’ve got to try different things and see if that works,” say Julien. “Obviously [Friday night], he played really well and I think we have to be honest here, it’s probably half of American League team on the other team [with the Islanders] so you don’t want to diminish what he did, because he really played well and I think it’s a matter of – we may have to look at him again.”
“But the biggest thing for him right now is consistency and we know what he can do and what he did tonight is exactly what we want him to do. There’s games that he does it really, really well and other games there’s a big drop in his play, so consistency is also a part of a player maturing and getting better at it, so he excites us when he’s on top of his game like that. He’s a real good player.”
“It’s a new position for him – I thought he played well. We we were talking a lot and just trying to make it easy. I think playing an unfamiliar position with two – well, maybe him and Griff know each other, but – a new centerman, I thought it worked well.” – Bruins alternate captain Chris Kelly on Ryan Spooner’s move to left wing.
Malcolm Subban was impressive in net for the Black and Gold. Subban made thirty two of thirty three stops(.969) in net for Boston. Many of those stops were against quality shots on goal. Subban closed the door on the Islanders after the Kyle Okposo power play goal. His strong action in the crease shut down the Islanders last night. Subban has cemented his position as the number one goaltender in Providence with last night’s win.
“It seemed that we had a lot of the momentum, but once they made it 4-1 in the third, we just kind of sat back and didn’t play the game the way we needed to play,” – Islanders forward Kyle Okposo
There were plenty of AHL caliber moments throughout the game. There were several penalties that could have been called that weren’t. That led to some chippy moments in the game. Kevan Miller had an AHL moment of his own as he plowed into Brock Nelson. That earned him a five minute misconduct, getting ejected from the game, and a guaranteed review by Stephane Quintal over at Player Safety. The Islanders scored their only goal on the night on the ensuing power play.
Miller’s hit generated some hard feelings which led to two fights in the third period. Chris Breen easily handled Islanders rookie Ross Johnston in the first one. Jordan Caron chose to step up in the second one but had a hard time of it taking on Brett Gallant.
This win brings the Bruins to 3-2-1, and they finish out their preseason with a game against the Detroit Red Wings at the TD Garden tonight.