Boston Bruins Top Minnesota Wild 4-2 At Home
Boston Bruins Top Minnesota Wild 4-2 At Home By Way of a Loui Eriksson Hat Trick
Greg M. Cooper-USA TODAY Sports
The Boston Bruins won a rare game at home on Thursday against the Minnesota Wild. Jonas Gustavsson received the start and was solid once again, improving his record to 4-1 on the season. Gustavsson has been one of the best finds of the offseason, providing stability on the back-end for the Bruins on the nights when Tuukka Rask gets some time off. The Bruins are now 9-8-1 and are currently sitting in ninth place in the Eastern Conference.
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The Bruins looked good from start to finish in this game, which has been one of their biggest issues so far this season. Claude Julien has been preaching consistency for the entire season and this game against the Wild was a step in the right direction for the Bruins after their undisciplined play against the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday. The Boston Bruins have been their own worst enemy so far this season, often playing poor defensively or losing focus on their discipline as the game progresses. The Bruins’ offense and power play have been atop the league this season, but their goals against and penalty killing often render that offense useless.
The scoring for the game was opened by Brad Marchand, and the rest of the show was Loui Eriksson‘s. With his first hat trick as a member of the Boston Bruins, Loui Eriksson took over the scoring lead for the Bruins with nine goals on the season. Claude Julien had some positive things to say about Eriksson after the game. “He’s been good since the beginning of the year.” He also said “Not only does he deserve to be the best player tonight because of those three goals, but because of the rest of his game as well”. Eriksson is known for his two-way ability, but his entire game has been worth discussing since the beginning of the season as Julien mentioned. The third member of the Loui Eriksson, David Krejci line was unfortunately hurt early on in the second period, which meant Eriksson and the rest of the Bruins had to really step up to make up for their undermanned forward group.
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Frank Vatrano was ridden into the boards by Wild defender Nate Prosser which led to his exit early in the second period. The young forward has been very solid for the Bruins since being called up from Providence to replace David Pastrnak, and the Bruins will hope his injury is nothing serious. After the game, Claude Julien simply stated it was an “upper-body injury” and left it at that. Vatrano wasn’t the only young player that was injured in the game as Wild forward Jason Zucker was left in pain on the ice as the final seconds of the game ticked off the clock after a seemingly-harmless Matt Beleskey slash knocked him down to the ice. Zucker scored one of Minnesota’s two goals on the night and has been on a hot streak as of late, replacing Zach Parise on the Wild’s top line.
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