BOSTON — While the vast majority of New England’s sports fanatics were counting down the hours to Sunday’s AFC Championship game involving their favorite football team in Denver, the local hockey team put forth one of their better showings of the season on a frigid Saturday night against their hated rivals.
The Bruins checked off a lot of boxes in taking down the Montreal Canadiens, 4-3, before the usual sellout of 17,850. To wit:
• For the first time in 18 tries this season, Boston came back to win a game they trailed after two periods.
• Morgan Geekie, who had never scored in 10 career games against Montreal and had recently suffered through a 12-game goal-less drought, potted a pair of power play tallies, including the game-winning with 5:50 to go, which also happened to be the 100th lamplighter of his career.
• A 12-second sequence totally swung the contest in Boston’s favor. A Fraser Minten backhand tied the game at 3-3 with 6:05 to go; Tanner Jeannot drew a holding penalty whistled against the Canadiens’ Alexandre Carrier eight seconds later, and Geekie put home the eventual winner just four ticks after that.
• The locals went 3-for-4 on the power play, with Viktor Arvidsson also cashing in off a pretty cross-crease feed from Minten just 105 seconds into the second period.
• The Black-and-Gold, wearing their white sweaters at home for only the second time this season (ultimately winning both outings), came back from deficits of 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2 to earn the two points.
• They responded from a dreadful first period (2 total shots on net) with much better efforts over the final 40 minutes of play.
• They survived a hat trick from Montreal’s Cole Caufield, the dangerous Wisconsin-born left winger who twice beat Jeremy Swayman (22 saves) on quick trigger shots from the goalie’s stick side.
The triumph was Boston’s 30th in 52 games this winter. Their 62 points keep them ensconced as one of the East’s two wild card teams (along with Montreal) and just a single point behind Buffalo in the Atlantic Division standings.
It was also the Bruins’ eighth win in their last nine games and 10th in 12 contests dating back to a New Year’s Eve victory over the Oilers in Edmonton.
Geekie, who along with his wife Emma welcomed a baby boy, Max, into the world earlier this month, scored his 27th and 28th goals of the season on the night his newborn was at his first NHL game.
The second of his snipes, a one-time bomb from the left point that blistered its way past Montreal goalie Sam Montembeault, was struck so hard that no one was sure it actually went into the net or not. The game officials conferred, checked the video and ruled that the puck had, in fact, gone in and stuck in the bottom padding that connects the netting and ice surface.
“It’s just kind of the no-quit mentality,” Geekie said of his team’s resiliency. “At times during the year we kind of get away from that, and I think when we have the start we did it’s easy to get behind the 8-ball early. But our power play kept us in it, and 5-on-5 and the penalty kill gave us a chance to win tonight.
“It’s a testament to the quality of guys in this room just being able to find ways to win.”
Having fed Geekie for his first goal after a semi-self pass in the slot, David Pastrnak said his team’s confidence grew during the game while finding ways to fight back from three separate deficits.
“As a group, collectively the way we responded after the first period, that’s what I’m most proud of,” he said.
As stated earlier, a lot of boxes were checked off.
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Phil Stacey, Executive Sports Editor at The Salem News, has covered the Boston Bruins for more than 30 years. Contact him at pstacey@salemnews.com and follow him on X @PhilStacey_SN