Recap: Bergeron pots four goals as Bruins beat Red Wings

There’s no denying it’s been a tough start to the season for Boston Bruins captain Patrice Bergeron.

But on Thursday night, the Bergeron of old came to play, scoring four goals in the Bruins’ 5-1 win over the Detroit Red Wings.

Bergeron’s first three goals all came on the power play, as the man-advantage was clicking for Boston. Brad Marchand assisted on all four of Bergeron’s goals, Mike Reilly got his first goal of the season and Jeremy Swayman picked up his second win, making 14 saves.

1st period

The Bruins power play has struggled to start the season, but we saw some tic-tac-toe action on the Bruins’ first power play of the night. Right off the face off after the penalty to Vladislav Namestnikov, Charlie McAvoy gave it to Marchand, who one-touched the puck to Bergeron for the one-timer.

It was another excellent first period for the Bruins, which seems to be the trend these days. Outshot the Red Wings 12-3 in the opening frame, but only got one by Thomas Greiss to take a 1-0 lead into the intermission.

2nd period

After controlling the game for the first 10 minutes, the Bruins got on the power play for the third time in the game, and it once again was the Marchand-Bergeron connection.

Great look by Marchand, takes a quick pea to see where Bergeron is and he scores from about the same spot.

Late in the period, in the dying seconds of a power play, guess who? Yupp, Marchand to Bergeron for the hat trick.

The Bruins deserved to have more than a two-goal lead heading into the final 20 and they got some insurance late in the second to make it 3-0.

3rd period

Didn’t love the start. Three penalties in the first seven minutes of the last frame, with two coming close to the same time to give the Red Wings a 5 on 3.

Lucas Raymond remains the hottest Red Wing right now, making the Bruins pay on the two-man advantage with the power play goal.

Excellent vision by Filip Hronek as well. Looked like he was shooting all the way, crept in to find the passing lane and made a great pass.

This is where I was a bit worried the Bruins would collapse and let the Red Wings back in similarly to the Sharks game. But the two-goal lead lasted less than 30 second as Mike Reilly put home a shorthanded goal to bring the score to 4-1.

Not often you see a defenseman jump into the play shorthanded as the second guy in, but Reilly saw a chance and went for it. A+ celly too.

Three goals wasn’t enough to satisfy Bergeron as off the rush, he buried one five-hole on Greiss just for some extra fun.

Not a great goal to allow by Greiss, but wasn’t like it made a big difference.

A big win against a division opponent for the Bruins as they move to 5-3-0 on the season with the 5-1 win.

Notes

• How about Patrice Bergeron, eh? People were starting to wonder if age was catching up to him. Questioning if his “heart” was in it (looking at you Mazz and Big Jim from 98.5). No, it hasn’t been the best start, but Bergeron prove all that wrong. His seventh career hat trick and first career four-goal game. He’s still got it folks
• Four apples for Brad Marchand. I wanted to point this out earlier when he was hot and likely will write about it, but is this the season Marchand hits 100 points? It’s certainly a possibility
• The struggling power play finally showed up. Three for five on the man advantage and it was pretty passing on all three goals. No flukes or nothing. That top unit looks like it could be heating up
• Cassidy went with some different D pairs to start and I don’t hate them. I don’t know how long they’ll last considering it was again asking for Forbort-McAvoy and I don’t love him on the top unit, but we’ll see
• Fairly easy night for Swayman. Only faced 15 shots and nothing he could do on the lone goal. The schedule has been brutal thus far as he last played over a week ago. Hopefully this helps build his confidence
• I really liked Lazar skating on the third line. Can hit, but also has some untapped offensive upside. The shuffling of the bottom-six will continue especially with injuries, but that third line looked pretty good
• How good was that line? No goals, but held Detroit to just one shot all game 5 on 5. Not too bad
• Didn’t love the penalties late. It’s begging to let a team back in. You do that against a good team with a lead, and it quickly will be evaporated
• With that said, credit where credit is due and the Bruins answered right back after the Raymond goal. We haven’t really seen that yet where the Bruins put a team away with a dagger
• I think the NHL is better when Detroit is good. I love what I’ve seen out of Raymond and Moritz Seider for them. They were without Dylan Larkin last night so I expect them to be tougher to play against when these two sides meet again this season. Steve Yzerman has this team in a good shape going forward

The Bruins (thankfully) will play again soon, with a matchup against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday in Toronto. First time these two teams have squared off in almost two years. The last matchup came on November 15 of 2019.

Toronto has had an up-and-down start so we’ll see which Maple Leaf team shows up on Saturday. But it’s always fun when these two rivals go at it and Saturday should be no different.