Bruins Split First Two Away Games

GAME 1

The Bruins entered the first round of the AHL playoff series with the Pittsburgh Penguins with hopes to give the Penguins a hard fought series. But in game 1 the Penguins showed why they were the #2 seed in the Eastern Conference by quickly making it 1-0 on a Marc Methot wrister from the point that hit Bruin d'man Rostislav Klesla before finding the back of the net 03:11 into the first period. The Penguins outshot the Bruins 14-8 in the first period and added two late goals from Antti Miettinen and Martin Erat to make it 3-0.

The Bruins got a tough break even before the 2nd period began as Eric Nystrom was called for unsportsmanlike conduct at 00:00. Exactly what happened wasn't caught by cameras, but it's believed that Nystrom "accidentally" took one of the refs whistles. Troy Brouwer and Antti Miettinen, with his second goal of the game, made it 5-0 even before the half way mark of the second period. The Bruins were a beaten team, but did outshoot the Penguins in the last two periods by 23-15 and won the 3rd period with the lone goal scored by Logan Couture who was skating on the 4th line in this game.

CHANGES AHEAD

With Andrej Meszaros and Rostislav Klesla posting a -4 for the Bruins while Chris Pronger and Brad Stuart had +4 for the Penguins in game 1, the Bruins made a couple of changes for the second game of the series. First of all Meszaros was paired with Mike Commodore, while Klesla was paired with Matt Carle. An extra player was dressed for game 2 as John Carlson was brought in to give the Bruins a bit more speed and puck movement at the back end for the Power Play. And finally Logan Couture, who was one of the best Bruins in game 1, was moved up to the 2nd line while Justin Williams moved down to the 3rd line.

GAME 2

The result was the same as in game 1 though as the Penguins came out flying and went 2-0 up just 02:35 into the game with Simon Gagne and Martin Erat putting the puck past Mathieu Garon. The Bruins called a time-out after this and started to get under the skin of a number of Pens. But it wasn't until 01:58 of the second period when Eric Nystrom crashed the net and deflected a Justin Williams shot-pass past Jonas Hiller in the Pens net that we had a game on our hands. Before the period was over the Bruins had scored a total of four unanswered goals with Patrice Bergeron, Shane Doan and Zach Parise getting the last three.

The Bruins had been outshot 16-9 in the second period, but Garon played his best period so far in the playoff stopping all 16 shots. The Bruins were ahead 4-2 heading into the third period. David Legwand cut the lead to just one when he scored 01:20 into the third. But just over a minute later, Logan Couture once again got the last goal, this time in a winning effort as the Bruins were able to hold on to win 5-3 in a crucial game for the Bruins. The Pens outshot the Bruins by 37-22, in large part due to having four more power plays. Giving up too many power plays won't help the Bruins chances, but the penalty kill has been perfect so far with 10 straight kills.