Bruins overrun in second period, lose to Lightning, 6-2

Steve Conroy, Boston Herald on Mar 15, 2025

Published in Hockey

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BOSTON — If the Bruins and their fans did not get a whiff of their current reality in the loss in Ottawa on Thursday, then the Tampa Bay Lightning came to town and bashed them over the head with it at TD Garden on Saturday.

In an almost comically dominant second period, the Lightning scored three straight goals and cruised to a 6-2 win. The B’s played pretty well in the first period and not bad in the third period, but that second period — when the Bolts held a 20-0 shot advantage — was a doozy.

Now, with 14 games left, the B’s hopes for a high draft seem much more in reach than a playoff berth

The Lightning came into the game feeling a wee bit of heat. They had lost their previous three games, including last Saturday’s 4-0 blanking at the hands of the B’s, and the Ottawa Senators had crept to within four points of them in the three-slot in the Atlantic Division.

Meanwhile, the B’s were trying to get off to a better start than they did Thursday in a disastrous first period in Ottawa.

It immediately looked like Tampa was the team that would right all their wrongs, taking a 1-0 lead just 2:22 into the game.

With the B’s scrambling in their own end, Darren Raddysh took a blue line shot that Jeremy Swayman blocked, but Victor Hedman swooped in from the left point and deposited the loose puck into an open net.

The B’s eventually got their legs under them and started pushing back.

After both teams had unsuccessful power plays, the B’s evened the game at 15:58 off a terrific play by Andrew Peeke. The stay-at-home defenseman took a cross-ice backhand pass from Jakub Lauko just outside the Boston blue line and motored up the ice on the left side. Once in the offensive zone, he cut diagonally over to his strong side and made nice pass back into the slot for Elias Lindholm, who ripped his 12th of the year past Andrei Vasilevskiy.

The B’s got some jump out of that goal and buzzed the Tampa end. Vasilevskiy had to come up wit a big zone on Pavel Zacha off a backdoor pass from David Pastrnak.

Unfortunately for the B’s, the second period started much like the first, only this time the Bolts never let up for a second. Tampa scored three unanswered goals in the second and the official scoring had the shot count at 20-0. These eyes and ears could have sworn Casey Mittelstadt landed one at 12:00, but you get the picture. It was men against boys in the second.

The Bolts regained the lead at 2:13 after some heavy pressure. Defenseman Emil Lilleberg took a shot from the high slot to which Swayman had to react with his glove hand. But Peeke blocked it out front and it bounced to Nick Paul, who had plenty of space on the blocker side to score.

Tampa kept on the pressure, forcing Lauko to take a delay-of-game penalty. The B’s survived a withering Bolts power play, but the Lightning eventually got the third goal shortly after Lauko came out of the box. Ryan McDonagh’s blue line shot was deflected home by Anthony Cirelli at 7:22 and the B’s hard their work cut out for them.

The Bruins didn’t get their first shot of the period until 12 minutes had expired and it was a tester by Mittelstadt. But Tampa came right back down and continued to pressure.

After another long shift on which the B’s were getting suffocated in their own end, Raddysh fired a shot on net from the blue line that Swayman never saw and it was a 4-1 game at 17:08. It felt like it was 20-1.

By the end of the second, the makeshift B’s roster was loudly booed off the ice.

The players must have heard. The B’s got back on the board 23 seconds into the third on Marat Khusnutdinov’s second goal in as many games. The hustling Russian won a puck behind the Tampa net and fed it out high to Henri Jokiharju. Khusnutdinov came back out high to collect and he fired a shot that somehow made it through the pads of Vasilevskiy, trickling off the post and in.

The B’s had a chance to draw within one midway through the third when Zacha broke in free but his backhander hit Vasilevskiy’s mask.

That’s as close as the B's got. Brandon Hagel and Cirelli both scored into an empty net to end it. But it felt like it was over in the second period.