Montreal Canadiens' Travis Moen, right, fights with Boston Bruins' Adam McQuaid during the first period of an NHL hockey game in Montreal, Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Graham Hughes)
In the second period, Patrice Bergeron scored two goals (his 9th and 10th goals) to give the Bruins a 2-0 lead.
In the third period it was all Montreal as they controlled the play and outplayed the Bruins. Michael Ryder took a bad tripping penalty which Montreal got a lucky bounce off of Zdeno Chara's skate and into the net behind Tim Thomas. With 48 seconds left in the third period, the goalie pulled, Montreal tied the game with Bruins killer Brian Gionta deflecting a shot into the net past Thomas. The game went into overtime and 10 seconds in Blake Wheeler takes a lazy dumb hooking penalty. The Bruins survived the Montreal power-play. Later in overtime, Max Pacioretty took a shot from far out and a screened Thomas couldn't make the save far side and Montreal won it.
Pacioretty, picking up the classless play that was missing since Maxim Lapierre was traded away, pushed Chara from behind as Chara was skating behind his net after the overtime goal. This got Chara upset of course so he tried going after Pacioretty in the hugfest the Montreal players were having. Eventually Hal Gill got in there and put the bear hug on Chara because he didn't want to fight and get bloodied again. Both Chara and Gill got 10-minute misconducts for that. That's just a classless play by Pacioretty. You've been basically a career AHL player with now 8 career goals in 97 NHL games, you just won the game in overtime, probably the biggest goal you will ever score in your life, so you decide to go and push an opponent after a game they blew, what did you expect to happen?
Pacioretty on the incident:
"I was just so excited about the goal and I don't think it was anything too big. I think he was just upset about the breakdown by their team, but it is what it is and it's a good feeling so I'll try not to let that ruin it."
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Props to Chara for playing even though he wasn't feeling good. He didn't play the best, but he was better than some others even when sick, but the third period was just awful for everyone.
Nathan Horton did not play tonight because of an undisclosed injury.
Also props to the Bergeron-Recchi-Marchand line as they were the Bruins best line tonight despite the team choking in the final minutes of the third period.
Adam McQuaid got into a fight with Travis Moen in the first period after Moen was taking a few whacks at Thomas. Moen got the better of McQuaid early but McQuaid came back with some nice punches. They eventually tired out and the linesmen broke them up. McQuaid only had 4:51 of ice time so I don't know if he was benched or got hurt from the fight. I know I saw him on the ice for one shift after the fight. But he didn't play at all in the third period.
Tim Thomas is now 18-4-6 with a 1.84 GAA and a .944 save percentage.
The Bruins and Canadiens are now tied for 1st place in the Northeast divison with 49 points, but the Bruins have two games in hand.
The Bruins next game is on Monday at the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Penguins haven't been winning since losing Sidney Crosby to a concussion. Hopefully the Bruins can capitalize on Crosby being out of the lineup.
Comments
"They're very yappy and they dive a lot, and those are things you have to consciously not get sucked into."