The Edmonton Oilers may boast the best player in the game today, but the Bruins have been the NHL’s best team all season. On Monday, the latter was good enough to beat the former.
Barely.
Connor McDavid scored a pair of goals to give him 50 for the season, but Pavel Zacha’s late second-period goal held up as the game winner in a 3-2 victory at Rogers Place.
The B’s nursed the one-goal lead all third period and, with 4:30, Klim Kostin took a double minor high stick on Patrice Bergeron. After the Oilers survived the first two minutes, Oiler defenseman Vincent Desharnais slashed David Pastrnak to give the B’s a 5-on-3 with 2:26 left in regulation. But even on the 5-on-3, there were some hairy moments with McDavid blowing the zone to try to get the equalizer.
But in the end, the B’s were able to survive for their seventh straight win.
McDavid announced his presence in the game just 2:17 in. The Hart Trophy favorite sneaked behind Charlie McAvoy to accept a long pass from Leon Draisaitl along the left boards and broke in on a partial break. With McAvoy in pursuit, McDavid snapped a pea between the Jeremy Swayman’s pads for his league-leading 49th of the season.
But the B’s answered just 13 seconds later, and the two newest Bruins picked up their first points with the team.
Dmitry Olrov, replacing Matt Grzelcyk on the top pair, went in deep along the left side and fed the puck to Garnet Hathaway at the side of the net. Hathaway made a nice touch pass to Tomas Nosek out front and Nosek lifted his fourth of the year over goalie Stuart Skinner.
McDavid and Draisaitl gave the B’s fits on a couple of shifts, causing turnovers in the Boston zone several times, but they weren’t able to cash in before the B’s took their first lead of the game.
And it was McDavid who turned the puck over at the Bruin blue line to create a 2-on-1 for Nick Foligno and Charlie Coyle. Orlov blocked McDavid’s pass attempt and poked the puck back up the ice for Foligno, who played give-and-go with Coyle, taking the return pass from Coyle to bury his 10th of the year at 15:06.
“A great play by (Coyle),” Foligno told NESN. “Great play first of all by Orlov to poke it back in the neutral zone to give us an odd man rush and then (Coyle) gave me that chance for a mini-breakaway, saw my spot and went for it.”
The B’s survived a scare in the first period when Brad Marchand turned his right ankle and had to miss a chunk of the period but returned before it was out.
The teams traded goals in the second period.
Edmonton was able to even it up at 12:20 of the second on a funky play. The B’s had a short 4-on-3 and at the end of it, Cody Ceci cleared the puck down the ice. As Edmonton got back to even strength, Klim Kostin chased it down behind the B’s net and he glanced over his shoulder to see that McDavid was changing on to the ice. Kostin circled behind the net with McAvoy on his hip and fed a wide open McDavid, who made a quick deke to beat Swayman for No. 50.
But the B’s regained their one-goal lead in the final minute of the period. The B’s had two terrific shifts inside the Oiler zone, with the fourth line handing the baton to the Czech line. Eventually, David Pastrnak flipped a puck toward the net. Zacha tried to deflect it home but after the puck just died on the ice, Zacha spun around Ceci and dove to somehow flick it over Skinner for his 14th of the year with 30 seconds left in the second.
