The bad: No success for Boston on the power-play
Heading into the game with a power-play running at 30.9% and leading the entire league in power-play goals with 17, safe to say, you almost expect the Boston Bruins to score whenever they get a man advantage.
Granted, they were facing a team in the top-10 of the league when it comes to penalty killing, but given the options available and with the points that Marchand and Pastrnak have already put away, this should’ve been a foregone conclusion.
Instead, Boston were unable to capitalise; Joel Ferribee gave up a high-sticking penalty on Marchand just after Travis Konecny opened the scoring for the Flyers – if the Boston Bruins had have been able to capitalise on this opportunity, there’s every chance the game would’ve ended up following a significantly different narrative.
Instead, Philadelphia came out of the penalty-kill unscathed and scored just under two minutes later, leaving the Bruins to chase a result for the rest of the game.
The other key power-play chance came after the Bruins had tied the scores in the third period, with Oskar Lindblom called for a trip.
Again, it’s one of those ‘what if’ moments, but Boston were very much on the ascendancy in the third period and if they’d have netted a goal here, it’s all but a guarantee the Flyers wouldn’t have had the gas for a comeback.
Instead, the special teams played each other to a tie on both sides and as a result we ended up going to over-time and a shoot-out; the latter not being the way you want to end a game.