Boston Bruins: Jaroslav Halak shines despite shoot-out loss against Flyers

The Boston Bruins toughed it out with Jaroslav Halak shining, as they sneaked a point in the shoot-out loss against an energised Philadelphia Flyers side.

Jaroslav Halak stepped in with Tuukka Rask having started in both the losses in Montreal and Detroit. The Boston Bruins were clearly hoping their number two stopper could step in and help them turn around their recent fortunes.

As much as Jaroslav Halak did shine, he wasn’t able to steal the win for the Boston Bruins on the night. The Philadelphia Flyers, clearly energised from strong recent results against Carolina, Montreal and Toronto, came at them from the get-go.

On paper the result looks like an relatively even affair, with the Flyers managing 29 shots to the Bruins’ 28, likewise there wasn’t significant differences in blocked shots or penalty minutes that point to the game clearly favouring one side or the other.

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However, it was the goaltending of Jarsolav Halak that served to allow the Bruins to take away a point on the night.

The Philadelphia Flyers were clearly the team on the ascent in the first period, with a Corsi For percentage of 62.5%, dipping back to 51.61% in the second before the Boston Bruins really came at them in the third.

Translated to what this meant for Jaroslav Halak in the Bruins’ net; the Flyers tallied 12 scoring chances to Boston’s 4 in the first and a further 9 in the second. 6 of those were adjudged to be ‘high danger’, obviously 2 being goals to Philadelphia. It was abundantly clear that, for the most part, the Bruins struggled particularly against the trio of Oskar Lindblom, Travis Konecny and Sean Couturier.

Jaroslav Halak was forced to earn his keep on more than one occasion, coming up big as a result of defensive lapses:

The most blatant element missing from the Boston Bruins’ game seemed to be the unwillingness to tidy things up in Halak’s crease. Given the Flyers have a net-front presence in James van Riemsdyk, known league-wide to be pretty impressive in the opposition’s blue-paint, it’s surprising that the Bruins were found lacking in this area.

Given that the Boston Bruins shouldn’t really have had the chance at a third period comeback, it’s hard to look beyond Halak as the stand-out performer for the game.

The usual suspects were surprisingly quiet and the line-up, as expected with the amount of different faces lately, just seemed lacking in cohesion.

To come away with a loss in the shoot-out and thus a point that could’ve quite easily have been two with a little more luck on their side in the game-closing skills contest, was almost all on Jarsolav Halak keeping them in the game through the first two periods.

The Boston Bruins will need to really up their game to end this recent slump; safe to say though that Jarsolav Halak may well be in line for another start on Tuesday night against Florida.