Monday night at the Nationwide Arena, Tuukka Rask carried the Boston Bruins through to the Eastern Conference Finals with a clean sheet despite 39 shots on goal, as the Bruins scored three against Sergei Bobrovsky and the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Penalty wise, Columbus kept a pretty clean sheet throughout the game, with just one at 6:46 in the first – P Dubois’ interference on Rask getting Dubois the only visit to the penalty box. Boston, had four penalties overall, three in the second period and one in the third, but the penalty killing units for both teams remained strong and let nothing slip.
The first goal for Boston came well in to the second period when Connor Clifton and Jake DeBrusk provided the assists to David Krejci – DeBrusk’s shot having hit the crossbar – Krejci burying the rebound to start the scoring for the Bruins at 32:13 of the game.
Marcus Johansson, almost nine minutes into the third picked up goal number two, with assists from Charlie Coyle and Danton Heinen.
David Backes scored the third goal for the Bruins a minute and forty one seconds later, Tory Krug getting in with an assist this time, Krejci picking up another to go with his from the first goal.
Blue Jackets captain, Nick Foligno said “Just disappointing, I thought we played really well tonight, just didn’t get a result.”
Bobrovsky stopped 26 of the 29 shots against him. This was Rask’s sixth Stanley Cup playoff shutout, “We played hard, we played solid, we closed it out,” said Rask. “They had a great push in the second, a lot of shots, then we had some penalty kills in the third there. We defended hard. It always makes my job easier when there are no second chances.”
[WATCH: All Bruins vs. Blue Jackets Game 6 highlights]
Boston Bruins advance to the Eastern Conference Finals where they will face the Carolina Hurricanes, games one and two to be played at the TD Gardens, in Boston.
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