The Boston Bruins gave their fans something special to remember in their last home game of the season. Brad Marchand and Tyler Bertuzzi scored points during a power play, helping the Bruins to break an NHL record with a 5-2 victory against Washington Capitals!
The Bruins won their seventh game in a row and have 133 points. That’s more than what the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens had, even though they played at an era without over time or shootouts like there are today. This is because the Bruins have 11 extra pointsThanks to five shootout wins and six overtime wins – something that wasn’t available back then. Fans inside TD Garden were chanting “We want the Cup!” while these records were being broken.
Marchand said he was happy about their record but it’s only for the regular season. The playoffs are a different story and everyone starts over with the same goal.
The Bruins broke the victory record after setting the NHL’s win record with 63 on Sunday, which was higher than the 1995-96 Detroit Red Wings and 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Bruins’ coach Jim Montgomery said Montreal’s 80 wins are more special because those teams playing back then were really good. On Tuesday night, Boston won their 64th game this season with goals from Tomas Nosek, Garnet Hathaway and Jake DeBrusk.
David Pastrnak achieved a huge milestone when he scored his 60th goal on a night, and then just the next day posted two more assists to get up to a total of 51. Linus Ullmark made 19 saves before leaving the game because of tight muscles nine minutes later. Marchand and Patrice Bergeron also got involved by giving out some assists too.
The result is that in the playoffs the Bruins will have an advantage since they can play all those matches at home as they are trying to win their first Stanley Cup since 2011!
Nick Jensen and Tom Wilson both scored a goal for the Capitals. Charlie Lindgren made 33 saves, including an impressive one-handed catch without even wearing a glove during the third period.
Wilson was able to cut the two-goal deficit to 3-2 in the third before Nosek found Hathaway and he was able to score his 13th goal.
The Bruins were given their first power play of the game after Matt Irwin did a cross-check on Taylor Hall 12 minutes into the second period.
Boston scored first and took the lead with just under a minute left. Patrice Bergeron passed the puck to David Pastrnak, which he immediately sent to Brad Marchand in the bottom right corner of the ice. Marchand then got his 21st goal of the season – his first goal in 17 games since their last game against Edmonton on March 9th.
Marchand chuckled a bit and said, “It’s really annoying but it’s also kind of funny. You can’t take it too seriously or else you’ll get stressed out about it. It doesn’t happen all the time so I know that at least.”
Then, even more bad luck happened when Tom Wilson got in trouble for hitting Charlie McAvoy with only seven minutes left in the period, which resulted in Boston getting another power play.
The Bruins scored the first goal when Bertuzzi was in the right place to collect a shot by Pastrnak and Pot the 8th goal of this season. Jensen reduced it to one with 4:53 minutes left when his wrist shot hit McAvoy and went into the net earning him his 5th goal this year.
Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman watched when Tampa Bay hosted Toronto Tuesday night.
An 89-year-old friend of Montgomery and his former hockey coach was thrilled to see a record that he helped set being broken. He had previously coached Montreal and Detroit and together they achieved 132 points in just 80 games. Despite this incredible record, the elderly man was very excited for Montgomery who made it back onto a good team with lots of confidence. He concluded by saying that you don’t always need to keep all your records, and if someone breaks them he is more than happy for them.
Boston managed to score two power play goals in the game, something they only achieved once before. Washington’s player Jensen has now scored in five games in a row, setting a new career high for him. Henrik Borgstrom was called up from the minor leagues on Tuesday and he has become the first Finnish player to dress for the Capitals in 14 years. The Capitals will be playing against New Jersey at their home on Thursday night, while Boston will be travelling to Montreal to take on their team also on Thursday night.
Mark Didtler, who is from Tampa in Florida, helped the Associated Press (AP) with this story. Also, you can find hockey news and sports updates on social media websites such as Twitter – https://twitter.com/NHLZonecom and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports.
