At least it wasn’t a shutout. That’s pretty much all you can take from last night’s Bruins game and it took well into the third period for their one score to be on the board.
Just like that did on Saturday the Bruins came out flat and never really rebounded. They were down 2-0 after one and down 4-0 with about 15 or so seconds left in the second period when the hit that everyone is talking about happened. Zdeno Chara looking to finish his man, checked Max Pacioretty and it really just happened at the wrong spot on the ice.
Pacioretty was hit where the boards and bench meet and there’s no glass. He hit his head in the gap area snapping his neck and being knocked unconscious. He laid motionless on the ice, was taken off on a stretcher and taken to an area hospital where it was confirmed that he had movement in all his limbs.
My take on the hit was that it wasn’t a dirty hit. If it was on the other side of the ice he would have just hit the boards. But because it was in the bench area he was a victim of circumstance more than anything else. Chara isn’t a dirty player (like a Matt Cooke) and I don’t think would intentionally try and injure an opponent.
The B’s got on the board late in the third like I said when Lucic scored his 29th of the season but it was too little, too late.
But why wasn’t Thomas playing? I thought we agreed earlier that Thomas would start against the good teams and let Tuukka play against the NHL’s bottom feeders. Well Montreal is sitting at the #6 seed this morning (now just three points behind the Bruins in the Northeast) so their no slouch. Well it turns out that Thomas hurt his glove hand at the morning skate so Tuukka was forced into the start.
It’s only one game (we can hope Chara isn’t suspended) but it’s two flat games in a row for the Bruins. Time to take a page from Da Guy’s book and for Claude to Shake It Up.
