Here are Joe Haggerty's Talking Points from the Bruins' 4-3 shootout loss to the Lightning Thursday night at TD Garden.
GOLD STAR: David Pastrnak was once again the shining star for the Bruins offense with a pair of goals and three points overall to go with four shots on net and seven shot attempts in 21:34 of ice time. It was Pastrnak that scored with little more than three minutes to go in the third period to tie things up and make certain that the Bruins at least got a point for their efforts on Thursday night. Now Pastrnak has six goals in his last two games and leads the Bruins with seven goals scored in seven games this season for the Black and Gold. The problems are twofold: Pastrnak isn’t going to sustain this kind of scoring pace for the Bruins, and he’s doing most of his damage on the power play rather than during five-on-five play. It’s enjoyable for the Bruins while it’s going on, but it’s also masking some big issues with this team right now.
BLACK EYE: Zdeno Chara was on the ice for a pair of goals against and made one of the biggest mistakes of the game when he allowed Brayden Point to get behind him for a breakaway goal in the final two seconds of the first period. Chara finished with a minus-2 rating in his 22:05 of ice time, had just a single shot on net and wasn’t much of a physical factor either with two hits and two blocked shots in a game where the Lightning brought plenty of physicality to the table. The Bruins obviously rebounded from Chara’s mental mistake at the end of the first period, but B’s players both young and old need to pay much greater attention to detail if they are looking for two points against teams like Tampa.
TURNING POINT: The turning point for the Bruins was the end of the first period when the B’s had effectively held down the Lightning for nearly the entire 20 minutes, and were about to go to the first intermission up 1-0. Instead, both Zdeno Chara and Charlie McAvoy allowed Brayden Point to get behind them in the final seconds of the period, and Point beat Tuukka Rask with a slick move to his glove hand with 1.6 seconds left in the first period. That gave all the momentum to Tampa headed into the first intermission and set up a back-and-forth game that the Bruins weren’t able to come out on top of when it was all done.
HONORABLE MENTION: Brayden Point is one of the best players in the NHL that nobody knows about. Point took advantage of the Bruins at the end of the first period when he got behind the Chara/Charlie McAvoy pairing for a goal and he played an excellent all-around game with a goal, two points, a plus-2 rating, eight shot attempts and 7-of-9 face-off wins in 21:21 of ice time. The Lightning are going the Bruins route with a huge top line of Nikita Kucherov-Point-Steve Stamkos and that line produced a pair of even-strength goals before Stamkos scored the shootout game-winner in the extra session. Point has been excellent against the B’s for a while and Thursday night was no exception.
BY THE NUMBERS: 14-of-17 – the number of goals scored by Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak over the last six games, which is great for them and really not great at all for everybody else on the B’s roster.
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QUOTE TO NOTE: “We win that game if we get secondary scoring from anybody else. I think that’s stating the obvious.” –Bruce Cassidy, on the lack of secondary scoring on a night the B’s lost 4-3 to Tampa in the shootout.
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