When Are the Bruins Playing Again

The Bruins play the tough guy in Game two, and the Maple Leafs blanch

Everything will have to come faster for the Leafs when the series returns to Toronto

Past Bruce Arthur Sports Columnist

Sat., April xiii, 2019 5 min. read

Article was updated April. 14, 2019

BOSTON—Even if nigh nobody fights in the NHL anymore, styles make fights. The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins are ii elite teams built for unlike visions of how the game is played, and should exist played. Toronto skates and plays fast; Boston skates fast just slows you downwardly, and past the way, lookout man yourself there. You could get injure if you're not conscientious.

In Game ii of this first-round series, the Bruins played like Bruins. Information technology was good old-fashioned hockey, turning Toronto's progressive fun approach into a sort of skittering frivolity, veering to stupidity. (The officiating was old-fashioned, too, and not ever in a good way.) All season Mike Babcock has been preaching heavy hockey, which isn't the Bruins turning people into wallpaper so much every bit it'due south the Bruins winning every puck boxing that matters for two periods. Bruins iv, Leafs 1, and the serial is tied 1-one.

"They came out and they played well," said defenceman Morgan Rielly. "They do that every unmarried fourth dimension, they did information technology every game last series, and we found a manner through. So it is what it is. You atmospheric condition the storm and yous motion on and yous play your game.

"I hateful, we're not going to alter who we are. We're going to play our game, and it worked for u.s.a. in Game 1. I thought nosotros did a decent job. We're down two later one. Big deal. You move on. We have to discover a fashion to score a goal, and we'll do the aforementioned thing in Game 3."

He also said "each person in this room expected that." So Toronto'southward reaction — along, perhaps, with water ice that was softened by a T-shirt-wearing sunny solar day in Boston — was the trouble. The Bruins were smashing into skaters, crashing into Andersen, mashing anybody they could, rattling the boards. Fifty-fifty Mitch Marner got hit, and he's supposed to be as elusive as Wayne Gretzky, as Bruins double-decker Bruce Cassidy said.

These aren't the Bruins that rampaged through Vancouver to the Loving cup in 2011; the game has changed. Nobody left on a stretcher, though Nazem Kadri was ejected for a dumb, retaliatory, high cross-check late in the third. You would call up, after last yr's iii-game suspension for standing up for a teammate, he would accept learned. Some people don't.

But at its best, Boston gives bruises. So at that place were scrums, with Zdeno Chara looming; there was Jake DeBrusk jumping Kadri after he striking David Krejci earlier, and Kadri got a casual small for getting punched in the face.

And most important, there was the skating earlier the hits, which stole Toronto'southward fourth dimension and luxury to play the puck with poise. The Leafs are the faster squad, and the puck moves faster than a skater, but not if you fumble it. The indicate of striking someone is to make them flinch. Toronto flinched.

"Just didn't call back nosotros executed besides, weren't as well-baked with the puck, and that didn't let us to really generate as much on the forecheck as we did in Game 1," said John Tavares. "You know, nosotros knew they were going to come difficult and respond, and nosotros simply didn't execute at a loftier enough rate, a high enough level. Sometimes that's how it goes, and yous've simply got to stay with it and find your game."

Earlier the chase-hunt-chase tertiary, the Marner-Tavares line, no longer matched against Boston'southward top 3, was vaporized. The Auston Matthews line was barely improve. Nikita Zaitsev and Jake Muzzin spent all night in reverse.

The shots and hits were already lopsided in Boston's favour when Zaitsev, who was widely praised after Game 1, kicked a puck he was supposed to exist handling behind his own net with a Bruin bearing down on him, and Boston won the puck boxing and scored out forepart. The second goal came when Muzzin whiffed trying to grab an airborne puck while trying to get on the ice during a change, and David Pastrnak found Brad Marchand for a pretty, zippy goal.

The shot attempts at v-on-five in the offset period: Bruins 21, Leafs half-dozen. And if you lot counted just high-danger scoring chances, it was worse than that. And so William Nylander left a puck past his ain post like he was thinking near his dinner reservations, and Danton Heinen tucked information technology in. It was 3-0, and the Leafs still hadn't had a keen scoring chance. Frederik Gauthier took a retaliation penalty, for whatever reason.

There were casualties; Bruins defenceman Torey Krug wobbled desperately trying to get up subsequently Muzzin hit him clean but into the boards; Kadri took a knee joint-to-knee hit from DeBrusk on a fast play late in the 2nd, and went to the room. Kadri came back, before he left once more.

This was the game the Bruins couldn't bring in Game 1. The Leafs were the ones throwing those hits in Game one, and Boston seemed surprised. Kadri said before the game, "Whatever fourth dimension they impact the puck yous want to be in their face up and permit them know that it'south going to be a long nighttime for them." Well, yes.

"We've got some guys who have been through some nasty serial in the past ... I retrieve our guys are skilful at that," said Cassidy. "We're not a team that runs from a concrete game. It brings out the all-time of the states at times. You've got to stay on the correct side of things, and brand sure y'all score and defend while you're doing all that. That was the enquire, and it happened for u.s.. We didn't have information technology (in Game one), for whatever reason."

Kadri veered to the bad side of things, and we'll encounter if he's suspended, or more likely for how long. You could say the Leafs are in ameliorate shape if they don't make those mistakes, each more egregious than the last. Simply for then long, they weren't even a threat to score. The playoffs are about playing your best nether the hardest conditions: most wanting the puck more than, and then making it dance while someone tries to accept your caput off.

The Leafs got a goal in the tertiary with the lines shuffled — Kadri, before he lost his head — and at present the Leafs will take another take a chance to react. These guys have spent their lives rising above hockey's steerage-class physicality. Boston's physicality, of course, can be first-course.

"Yeah, big-motion-picture show, nosotros're OK," said Muzzin. "Look at some stuff, get better."

The Leafs don't need to spend all night throwing hits and shoving after the whistle; they need to recall faster, play faster, compete harder, and play more of their version of playoff hockey. When yous're young, yous grow. Time to take another footstep.

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Source: https://www.thestar.com/sports/leafs/opinion/2019/04/13/the-bruins-play-the-tough-guy-in-game-2-and-the-maple-leafs-flinch.html