In Boston, Garnet Hathaway‘s goal late in the middle frame was the difference maker for the Bruins in a Saturday matinee with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“I think 85 percent of the game was will [over skill] for both teams,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. “I think it just made for a really good hockey game. Maybe a late 80s, early 90s [type of] hockey game, but it’s great because we’re going to face this in the playoffs.”
Hathaway scored at 17:32 to give the Bruins a 2-1 lead.
“As a team we’ve been looking forward to this, to a team that’s going to be in the playoffs and we potentially could see,” Hathaway said. “[They’re] a team that’s battling right now, and you’re going to play that same way. It’s encouraging for us as a line, but encouraging for us as a team to play that way.”
Linus Ullmark, who made 26 saves, made that goal stand up for the Bruins win.
Boston improved to 56-11-5 off their sixth straight win.
“I don’t care about Boston. I care about us,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “[The physicality] was good for us. It’s identity for us.”
Patrice Bergeron scored off the power play at 6:46 of the first period for a 1-0 lead to Boston.
“We keep playing to our standards (late in games),” Bergeron said. “We keep putting pressure on. I think that the few times where we got back on our heels throughout the year is when we put ourselves in trouble, so I think anytime we’re able to trust each other, we’re going to reload. But we can be aggressive and we’re going to have some layers. I feel like that’s a hard style of hockey to play against.”
Tampa dropped to 42-26-6 off their fourth straight loss.
“It’s tough to say it’s a great loss,” Tampa Bay forward Pierre-Edouard Bellemare said. “But at the end of the day, we showed up and [had] way more emotion, way more passion, and it’s not the outcome that we wanted, but the process is pretty much as close [to what] we wanted as possible.”
Victor Hedman scored in the first period to tie the game, 1-1.
“We were patient in the zone (on the penalty kill),” Hedman said. “We did what we were supposed to do, and [were] aggressive when we could [be].”
Hedman’s goal was shorthanded at 9:30 of the period. It was his first career shorthanded strike.
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 32 saves in the Tampa loss.
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