Bruins overcame the Panthers in overtime, with a nine-point lead.
BOSTON— The Boston Bruins defeated the Florida Panthers 3-2 at TD Garden on Monday, extending their winning streak from the start of the season to nine games.
Pavel Zacha scored the game's first goal at 3:36 of overtime.
With a wrist shot from down the right wing that beat Sergei Bobrovsky's blocker side, Zacha, who also earned an assist, scored.
"I wanted to know if we were going to play 2-on-1, and while I was driving there, I wanted to know if I would have a chance to pass," Zacha stated. "But after that, the defense kind of vanished, so I just checked the far side to see where it was open, and I'm glad I did it low blocker there."
Brad Marchand and Charlie McAvoy scored, and the Bruins (8-0-1) recorded their longest point run in team history with 35 saves from Linus Ullmark.
"After the first period, we just wanted to simplify our game because they looked so fast and we looked so slow," Boston coach Jim Montgomery stated. "Try to wear them down in their own end by getting to the forecheck."
Florida (4-3-1) scored goals and assists from Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhart, and Bobrovsky made 23 stops.
"It's early in the season, so we have good and bad periods," Barkov remarked. However, we want to make it clear that this is a game, and that we're playing for an entire 60 minutes at full effort, not just 20 or 40. Given their current position in first place and their skill level, I have no doubt that Boston will score if given the opportunity.
At 6:13 in the first period, Barkov scored the game's opening goal for the Panthers, beating Ullmark's left pad on a 2-on-1 with Reinhart.At 15:08, Reinhart scored the second goal by one-timing Barkov's assist from behind the net.
Panthers coach Paul Maurice remarked, "They've got just a nice bit of chemistry." Barkov and Reinhart share this trait. "It's very clever, but it's not a very heavy line."
At 3:38 in the second frame, Marchand made it 2-1 by tapping in a centering pass from Jake DeBrusk.Marchand stated, "We started supporting each other better."
"It was working for us because it allowed us to still come up with pucks after, you know, when they're playing physically, and we kept moving it forward and kind of caught them coming the wrong way."
At 7:20 of the third period, McAvoy tied the score 2-2 with a forehand deke off a pass in the slot from David Pastrnak.
At 9:28, McAvoy was given a match penalty for a check to Oliver Ekman-Larsson's head. This gave the Panthers a five-minute power play, during which they had six shots on goal, but they were unable to score.
"We never gave them the momentum, which is why it was so beneficial for us," Ullmark remarked. They always have to restart it or break out and come in because we always [get] the puck out in 15, 20 seconds. We prevented them from establishing anything since there might be a confrontation or something else afterwards.
And as I have stated, I must give the [penalty kill] people all the credit. Not just in that five minutes, but throughout the entire game, they performed incredibly well.
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