Recap: Marchand scores hat trick as Bruins beat Habs 5-1

Brad Marchand continues to be the hottest scorer on the planet.

Marchand’s fifth career hat trick helped the Boston Bruins to a 5-1 win over the rival Montreal Canadiens.

Curtis Lazar had a three-point night, scoring the other two goals and adding an assist. Patrice Bergeron registered two assists and Linus Ullmark made 24 saves to move to a perfect 5-0-0 in January.

The Bruins now have a record of 20-11-2 and are 6-1-0 in 2022. The Canadiens’ woes continue as they dropped their fourth game in a row and are now 7-24-4.

1st period

While the Bruins controlled most of play in the first, it wasn’t until late in the frame that they were rewarded for their efforts.

Marchand got the Bruins on the board with just over five and a half minutes to go in the 1st.

An exceptional feed from Tomas Nosek to find Marchand on the back door. Some god awful defensive coverage by the Canadiens, who allow Marchand to go right off the bench to the front of the net and the winger makes them pay.

15 seconds later, and Marchy was back at it again.

Future Boston Red Sox Brad Marchand? Heck of a play whacking the puck out of the air. Super strange bounce off the back boards and Jake Allen never knew the puck was coming.

Allen would leave the game minutes later, taking himself out of the game with an apparent lower-body injury. He would not return and Sam Montembeault took over the rest of the way.

Didn’t matter who was in net for the next goal, as a Jake DeBrusk shot deflected off of Lazar’s foot and into the net with under a minute to go to give the Bruins a 3-0 lead.

Lazar had no idea it even went in at first, he was too busy getting mauled in front by Christian Dvorak. But it went in nonetheless and it gave the Bruins a three-goal lead after the first.

2nd period

Montreal might have been on the power play, but the shorthanded duo of Marchand and Bergeron is unbeatable.

With John Moore jumping up in the play, Marchand cleaned up a rebound in front off the Moore shot to register his fifth career hat trick.

How fitting that he capped off the hatty with a shorty? It’s his second shorthanded tally of the season and it gave the Bruins a 4-0 advantage.

Montreal would finally get on the board with a Michael Pezzetta goal around the halfway point in the frame.

You can see something isn’t right with Moore. A few second earlier, Pezzetta hit him late and a bit from behind into the boards and I’m afraid I think it’s another concussion for Moore. He couldn’t stand up and by the way he was looking, you can’t blame him for losing Pezzetta in front who shot in the puck.

4-1 Boston lead after 2.

3rd period

Things got testy to say the least in the third. A big scrum about six minutes in occurred and we see Chris Wideman appears to headbutt Erik Haula, who certainly did not take too kindly to it. Wideman should have been tossed from the game, but he’ll at least hear about it from the league.

It wouldn’t be the only time we’d see angry Haula.

However, before we get to that, it looked like Urho Vaakanainen had his first career NHL goal, firing a shot from far out that beat Montembeault.

Unfortunately, it was later changed to a goal for Lazar, who did appear to get a stick on the shot, and Vaakanainen will have to wait for his first tally.

With Boston up 5-1, the game again got spicy, with Haula dropping the gloves with Laurent Dauphin late in the game.

We don’t see this often from Haula, but it was nice to see.

And that wrapped up the Wednesday night action. A 5-1 win convincing win over a bad Canadiens team.

Notes

• Another exceptional effort from Marchand. He was the star early in the season, keeping the Bruins season afloat and now he’s just dominating. He seriously needs Hart consideration because this team is so far from it true form without Marchand
• He came the sixth Bruins to register multiple goals in the three straight games. Not bad
• Three points from Curtis Lazar. You read that right. He has six points in six games in January. It’s gonna be tough to keep him out of the lineup if he keeps producing because that’s what the kids would call secondary scoring
• Sucks that his goal was taken away but Vaak has looked really good the last three games. Perhaps patience is a virtue of success
• Tough to see Moore leave like that. It’s definitely a concussion and by the looks of it, it’s not minor. Maybe the one positive is he was able to play through it, although I don’t think you can call the last seconds of that shift “playing”. Hope it’s not too serious, the guy has been riddled with injuries
• Tuukka who? Linus Ullmark continues to be excellent in the crease
• I like the 2022 Bruins much better than the 2021 Bruins

Boston is back again tomorrow in what will be Tuukka Rask’s return debut, going against the Philadelphia Flyers. It’s another opportunity for a dub and to continue this scorching start to 2022.