In the NHL, the Boston Bruins needed a bounce-back game after suffering a 9-2 loss to the L.A. Kings at home, and true to their modus operandi this season, they got their bounce-back on the road.
The Bruins opened up a tight 3-2 game in the third period to beat the Jets in Winnipeg 6-2, a good start to the team's critical six-game road trip.
The first period produced the kind of open-ended pond style hockey that drives coaches crazy. It's fun for fans if you like goals, and the Bruins and Jets traded them back and forth early and often. Patrice Bergeron got it started just a minute and a half into the game, taking a beautiful feed from Brad Marchand near the crease to tuck home his twentieth goal of the year. He would add number twenty-one in the third period along with a very surprising highlight, and more on that in a minute. But that first period was short on defense, with five goals scored between the two teams, Brad Marchand giving the Bruins a 3-2 lead as he continues his torrid pace toward a career-high year for goals scored if he can stay healthy, and out of the penalty box. Marchand took a feed at center ice and blasted by the Winnipeg defense near the end of the period, getting in all alone for a breakaway deke to his backhand, and going top shelf for his team-leading twenty-sixth goal of the season.
Things settled down in the second period, with no goals scored, but then the Bruins pulled away in the third, scoring three unanswered goals for the win, but not before Patrice Bergeron did something he had only done once before in 13 NHL regular seasons: get into a fight. Yes, Bergeron elected to drop the gloves with former Bruins teammate Blake Wheeler, another skill player not known for fisticuffs, and the bout didn't last long, but it did seem to light a fire under the Bruins, who then got goals from Bergeron, David Pastrnak, and Jimmy Hayes to seal the victory. Brett Connolly, who's been snake-bit on goal scoring all season, did add three helpers to get on the score sheet. Next up for the B's is a matinee tilt against the Wild in Minnesota, and the Montreal Canadiens are back in action tonight, looking to extend their current winning streak to four games against the Buffalo Sabres.
At Fenway Park tonight, it won't be baseball taking center stage. Instead it's the second day of the U.S. Grand Prix Big Air competition Ski and Snowboard event, and you have to do something pretty spectacular to make Fenway's famed Green Monster look small. The thirty-seven foot high wall, though, is dwarfed by the fourteen-story high ski ramp and jump that will be braved by some of the seventy five athletes from twenty-five countries who will compete in men's and women's snowboarding and freeskiing at the country's oldest ball park. Those athletes will include Vermont's eighteen year old snowboarding sensation Ty Walker of Stowe, and Olympic silver medalist Devin Logan of West Dover.
In mens' college hockey last night the Middlebury Panthers were taking on sixth-ranked Williams and it was a spirited contest that went to overtime when Middlebury's Zach Weier tied the game at four apiece with a little more than three minutes to go in regulation. But a minute into overtime, Colby Cretella scored to give the Ephs the 5-4 victory. The two teams will go at it again tonight at Kenyon Arena.
