I don't think anyone thought the Bruins would have a game this year better than the Dallas Stars game. Well they did. A week later.
The Boston Bruins defeated the Montreal Canadiens Wednesday night, 8-6. And if that wasn't wild enough, the two teams picked up 192 penalty minutes, the most ever in a Bruins game since 1998. It seemed a fight broke out every few minutes, and you could see the intensity and how much this game meant for both teams.
The scoring started a few minutes into the first period when Brad Marchand netted a backhander after a beautiful set of passes from Mark Recchi and Patrice Bergeron. It was 2-0 twelve seconds later when Dennis Seidenberg whacked at a pop up in front of the net and past Carey Price.
You'd think it was a relatively normal game after the period, nothing out of the ordinary. In the second, things changed a little bit.
Brian Gionta scored a 4-on-4 goal 25 seconds into the period to make it 2-1, and eight minutes later P.K. Subban scored to tie the game. The Bruins regained the lead quickly, with Adam McQuaid getting his first goal of the season and his first career goal at the TD Garden.
Yannick Weber scored his first career goal one minute later, and Tim Thomas never saw the puck due to Jordan Caron screening him. But Micheal Ryder scored 31 seconds later, and one minute later Milan Lucic boosted the lead to 5-3 Bruins. That's six goals in the first 12:31 of the second period, and five goals in four minutes.
Shortly after that was when all hell began. Brad Marchand appeared to hit a Canadien player hard after an icing touch up, and the Habs took exception to that. There was some pushing and shoving, with Mark Recchi and Marchand getting involved. Carey Price was pushing a few Bruins, and Tim Thomas skated over to that side of the ice looking to go with Price. At first the refs looked reluctant, but then let them go. Thomas could not get a grip on Price and eventually they both went down.
Back to the game. Montreal soon made it 5-4 on a goal from David Desharnais, but the Bruins retook a two goal lead from a Milan Lucic shorty. In all, the second period saw eight goals, with seven of them coming in a span of six minutes and 19 seconds.
into the third period, the Canadiens yet again shortened the Bruins' lead with Max Pacioretty's power play goal, but Boston quickly answered with back-to-back goals from Michael Ryder and Nathan Horton to make it 8-5 in favor of the Bruins.
Horton then got in a little scrum with Subban which turned out to be another line brawl: David Krejci dropped the gloves with Benoit Pouliot, while Johnny Boychuk hammered away on Jaroslav Spacek and Gregory Campbell on Tom Pyatt. Shawn Thornton got involved of course, too.
When play started again, Pacioretty scored again, giving the game its 8-6 final.