BOSTON — The Bruins notched their 61st victory of the season. They can only hope that it wasn’t a costly one.
David Pastrnak, who committed a bad turnover earlier in the game, blasted a one-timer past Ilya Samsonov at 2:30 of overtime to lift the Bruins to a 2-1 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs at TD Garden. It was Pastrnak’s 57th of the year, coming off a nice feed from Dmitry Orlov on a 4-on-4 just after a Leaf penalty was up.
But the Bruins have to be holding their collective breath after Charlie McAvoy left the game in the second period when he crashed hard into the boards and did not return. It was announced he had an upper body injury.
Shortly before the winner, Pavel Zacha had been called for a hand pass off a faceoff, a two-minute infraction but the officials got together and correctly rescinded the call, thus allowing the Bruins to notch the winner.
The Bruins trailed 1-0 in the third period but, just after their third failed power play, they tied it at 11:32. Brandon Carlo used all six feet and six inches of his frame to make a vertical leaping keep-in at the right point and got it down to Charlie Coyle. The big centerman drifted over the left circle snapped a shot that beat Ilya Samsonov to knot the game.
The Bruins held a 11-7 shot advantage in the first period, despite the fact that Toronto had the only two power plays in the opening 20 minutes.
Things got testy at the 14:33 mark when Sam Lafferty hit an off-balance Matt Gzelcyk and knocked the Bruin into the boards hard and awkwardly. Though the hit wasn’t egregious, the result looked bad and A.J. Greer felt compelled to exact some revenge, immediately throwing off his gloves and landing a couple of shots on Lafferty. Greer wound up getting two for an instigator, five for fighting and the 10-minute misconduct.
Jeremy Swayman’s best save came on the kill when he kicked out a William Nylander slot shot.
Both Swayman and his counterpart Ilya Samsonov kept the game scoreless through the first half of the second period but a Bruin mistake led to the first goal of the game. Pastrnak’s diagonal breakout pass was picked off by Lafferty just outside the Boston blue line and he counter-attacked. He dumped it into the opposite corner and the puck rimmed back out high to Zac Aston-Reese on the left wing. Lafferty headed to the net to receive Aston-Resse’s perfect return pass at the right post for the goal at 11:34. Swayman had no chance on it.
But the self-inflicted goal against wasn’t the biggest reason for concern. On a Toronto rush that produced a good chance for Nylander that Swayman stuffed, Patrice Bergeron crashed into McAvoy on the back check and McAvoy in turn slammed into the end boards. He was slow to get up and left the game. The club announced it was an upper body injury and he did not return.
The power-play yips returned for the Bruins in the second as well. They got two chances and could not sustain good pressure on either of them.
