The Garden was rocking during the Boston Bruins’ last minute Game 5 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets.
From start to finish, the Boston Bruins faithful answered the challenge set out to them by Jackets forward Brandon Dubinsky, who said upon returning home to Columbus – “I can tell ya, it’s going to be a hell of a lot louder than it was here in Boston.”
The 7th man had the Boston Bruins charged up early. The first period was scoreless, but there was plenty of emotion and the storyline remained the same – these goalies can play!
Sergei Bobrovsky and Tuukka Rask have both been lights out in this series and both goalies continued to make big saves.
The biggest positive for the Boston Bruins, aside from heading to Columbus in the driver’s seat with two chances to reach the Eastern Conference Finals, was the return of the Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak line.
These guys stormed out of the gate and had complete control on almost every shift. Pastrnak silenced the critics with a monster two-goal performance including a wild game winner with 1:28 left in the third.
The 3rd period saw the Bruins lose a two goal lead and the game stunk of yet another overtime. If you’re Boston Bruins head coach, Bruce Cassidy; you have to like the way they responded to the adversity of letting the two goal lead slip.
Heading into Monday’s game, there are some things the Bruins will need to clean up in their own zone if they want to stick the fork in a Blue Jackets team that you know is going to leave everything on the ice.
“We’ll be back here for game 7!” – John Tortorella
Outside of Brandon Carlo and Charlie McAvoy, the Boston Bruins defense can be beat, and we saw that with a couple breakaways in this game. 42-year-old Zdeno Chara, who has shown nothing but heart this play-offs certainly was feeling the speed and pace of today’s NHL and he had rough third period.
If the B’s are going to move on, they will need to lean heavy on Carlo and McAvoy. Both players seemed up to the task, and had their fingerprints all over Saturday’s victory. Carlo, who is excelling in his first play-offs, stood up Artermi Panarin at the line and made a beautiful pass to lead the breakout for the game winner.
McAvoy gave up his body with an insane block in the final seconds of the game, taking a Panarin slap shot right to the ankle. Charlie fired up the entire Bruins nation with that block, and it’s safe to say he has risen to the occasion and then some this playoffs. This team’s success now runs from the goal line out.
Post game, Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella was very snappy with the media, getting very snarky at almost every question until he blurted out “We’ll be back here for game 7”.
Last year in the series versus the Washington Capitals, the Columbus bench boss guaranteed the same thing going home down 3-2 to the Caps. The Capitals went on to win that game 6-3, so his track record as a fortune-teller doesn’t look so accurate.
This has to be pinned up locker room material before Game Six puck-drop; look for the Boston Bruins to go for the jugular early in that game too!