Boston Bruins: 3 Stars of the Past Week
Over the last four days, the Boston Bruins won two of their three games in New York against the Rangers and Islanders. They beat the Rangers 3-2 in overtime Wednesday night before sweeping the two games with a 1-0 shutout win Friday night at Madison Square Garden.
Saturday night at the Nassau Coliseum, for the second time this season, the Islanders got the best of the Black and Gold again with a 4-2 victory, handing the Bruins just their second regulation loss.
The Bruins had some good performances, but these three stood out the most. Here is the weekly edition of the Bruins Three Stars of the Week.
No. 3 – Nick Ritchie
Aside from the power play in the first 10 games, Ritchie has not really given the Bruins much in the way of a presence or production. That change this past week.
Friday night against the Rangers, he scored his fifth goal of the season, first at even strength, midway through the second period. He brought the puck in the Blue Shirts zone, flipped backhander that New York goalie Igor Shesterkin stopped. The rebound came right back to Ritchie and he was able to bank the puck from behind the goal line and into the goal off of Shesterkin’s back.
That was one of Ritchie’s strongest offensive games of the season. He had six shots on net and was causing havoc in front of the Rangers net on the power play.
Saturday night against the Islanders, Ritchie was again a shooting machine. He attempted eight shots, four on the net, he delivered three hits and played nearly 20 minutes. He had a breakaway in the second period, but was stopped by Semyon Varlamov, and his bound hit the post. The last two games were two of his better performances with the Bruins.
No. 2 – Patrice Bergeron
The Bruins’ new captain had another solid week. Wednesday night he assisted on Brad Marchand‘s overtime goal to complete another Boston come from behind victory, this time over the Rangers. Friday night, he had six shots on net, played nearly four and a half minutes on the penalty kill, and won 14 of his 26 faceoffs.
Saturday night, he had a goal and an assist in the loss to the Islanders and was dominant at the faceoff dot again, winning 19 of his 24 faceoffs. On the season, Bergeron is tied with Marchand on the team with 18 points. He has seven goals and a team-high 11 assists.
No. 1 – Jaroslav Halak
The Bruins backup netminder once again had another dominant performance in the net in Friday night’s 1-0 win over the Rangers. He made 10 of his 21 saves in the game in the first period and was a big reason for the game being scoreless after 20 minutes.
Halak’s best stop was in the first period on last October’s No. 1 overall draft pick Alexis Lafreniere with a nice pad save moving side to side. The Bruins were called for six penalties in the game, but Halak and his teammates were up to challenge by killing all of them.
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Halak’s shutout was the 51st of his career and improved the backup goalie to 4-0-1 on the season. He has a 1.38 goals-against average (GAA) this season and a .938 save percentage (SV%) in his five starts.