And this club is hoping to replicate the long journey it took last spring. The Bruins opened the defense of the Stanley Cup without a goal for more than 60 minutes, but got the only one they needed 1:18 into overtime to beat Washington 1-0 in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal series.
“We’re happy,” Bruins forward Brad Marchand said. “It’s a little bit of a relief to get that first one under the belt. You get the nerves out, the jitters. We’re not satisfied with one game, we have to improve and continue to get better.”
The Bruins know they will have to be better, as they learned quickly that the seventh-seeded Capitals won’t be any kind of pushover, not even with a third-string rookie between the pipes. Braden Holtby looked like anything but a novice in his first playoff start, keeping the Caps in the game as Boston outshot them 26-7 through two periods, including 17-2 in the second.
But it stayed scoreless despite that disparity, and remained scoreless as Washington pushed back in the third with a 9-3 edge in shots in that frame. Both sides had one shot on goal in the brief sudden-death session, and Chris Kelly made his count with a blast from the left circle that finally eluded Holtby.
“It was a really hard-fought game,” Bruins defenseman Dennis Seidenberg said. “Both teams were playing strong defensively and there wasn’t a whole lot off the rush, but I think we did a good job of being patient and staying patient, and at the end using that chance to score.
“That’s what playoff hockey is about, staying patient, playing strong defensively and staying consistent with what you do and not getting scored on,” Seidenberg added. “And then once you get a chance you try to just get a goal like we did in overtime and go with it.”
The Bruins got it by getting back on the attack after Washington had taken the initiative in the third. The Capitals actually continued to press to start OT, with a rush by Marcus Johansson starting the play that eventually created Kelly’s goal.
Tim Thomas made the save and the Bruins counterattacked, with Kelly scoring on a shot that even surprised himself by going in.
“I think I was probably the most surprised in the building,” Kelly said. “I think it might have went off the defenseman’s stick a little bit and changed up. Goalies are so good now that I think the days of going down the wing and beating a goalie with a shot are long past. I was pleasantly surprised to see it go in.”
That particular shot may have produced a stunning end, but Kelly’s approach was exactly as the Bruins scripted it.
“We just took the same approach: Just go out there and find a way to win,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said of overtime. “Let’s not be on our heels, and let’s go after these guys, and as you know, in the playoffs, in overtime, every shot’s a good shot. I thought Chris did a great job here of taking that instead of looking to make a cute play, and it was put in the right spot.”
And now the Bruins are in the right spot, leading by a game in the series with Game 2 on tap Saturday afternoon at the Garden. But they know there’s still a long way to go to get to where they really want to be, even after a fortuitous bounce in overtime to notch their first win of the postseason.
“Very happy and very surprised,” Seidenberg said. “I didn’t really see the shot, where it went. I just saw the net moving at the end. But it doesn’t matter how it went in; in the end we got the win.
“I’m just glad we started out on the right foot and now we just have to follow up and keep going and not back down,” Seidenberg added.
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