The Boston Bruins played run-and-gun hockey with the Red Wings in Motor City yesterday and the results were as you'd expect, with lots of momentum swings, plenty of goals, porous defense, and for the Bruins, their first loss in game three of a six-game road trip.
The goals came early and often in this one. In fact, the Bruins' Brad Marchand set a record for the fastest goal ever scored in team history, netting his team-leading twenty-eighth just eight seconds into the game. The Red Wings had iced the puck on their first possession and on the ensuing face off the draw went back to Marchand who ripped a wrister past Petr Mrazek. The Bruins built up a three to one lead but Detroit then scored four unanswered goals to take a five to three lead into the third. Along the way Pavel Datsyuk tallied two goals and an assist, becoming just the sixth Red Wing in history to surpass nine-hundred points for his NHL career. The Bruins got back to within a goal on a long range shot by defenseman Dennis Seidenberg and then tied the game while short-handed when Joonas Kemppainen wristed one past Mrazek, who's been terrific for the Red Wings this season and has taken over the starting job from Jimmy Howard, but was not at his best in this game. Neither was Tuukka Rask for Boston, who was pulled after letting in five goals on twenty-four shots, and the Bruins did seem to get a fire lit under them after the goalie change, scoring the tying goals while Jonas Gustafsson was in net as a replacement. But with a little under eight minutes to go in the third the Red Wings got the game-winner on a deflected shot by Danny DeKeyser and came away with a 6-5 victory, leapfrogging back over Boston into second place in the ever-shifting eastern conference standings. The B's try to get back in the win column Tuesday against the Blue Jackets in Columbus.
It may have been Valentine's Day yesterday but Cupid was reduced to a spectator role at Madison Square Garden, where the New York Rangers took on the Philadelphia Flyers and the gloves were dropped before the match-making cherub could even reach for his quiver of love arrows. Hockey players have long memories, and it wasn't very long ago that Wayne Simmonds of the Flyers sucker-punched Ranger's captain Ryan McDonagh after some pushing and shoving in their previous contest. The blow sent McDonagh to the ice with a concussion and he hasn't played since, so it was to the surprise of absolutely no one that Simmonds was challenged just a half a minute into the game by the Ranges' Dylan McIlrath. Tanner Glass and Ryan White were next on the dance card before a hockey game actually broke out, with skaters skating, passes made, and goals scored. Two of those goals came off the stick of the Ranger's Derek Stepan and the Rangers went on to a 3-1 win, their third win over the Flyers in five tries this season, and the Blueshirts have now won five of their last six.
The NBA held its east-west all star game north of the border in Toronto yesterday and unlike most all-star games, this one was a study in defense as both conferences decided to hunker down and eschew highlight reel dunking and shooting in favor of the kind of dogged defensive play that would make Bill Russell proud. I'm just kidding. It was a shooting gallery, and no chants of "dee-fense" were heard as the two squads set a record for points scored in an all-star game the west beating the east 196-173 (you heard that right), and the chanting was reserved almost exclusively for the L.A. Lakers' Kobe Bryant, playing in his final all-star game before retiring at the end of this year and waiting for his Hall of Fame enshrinement. Russell Westbrook was named the game's MVP for the second year in a row.
In college womens' basketball the UVM Catamounts took Hartford to overtime yesterday, but lost 52-50 when Darby Lee hit a baseline jumper for Hartford with two seconds left to seal the victory. Kylie Atwood led the Catamounts attack with 17 points in the losing effort.
The UVM men were also in action against their Hartford counterparts, and were able to grab a win, ending the team's two-game losing skid in a 92-81 win. Kurt Steidl scored a career-best twenty-six points to lead the Catamounts, and UVM is now one game behind third-place New Hampshire, which lost in the final seconds to Stony Brook on Sunday.
The UVM womens' hockey team was in action yesterday as well, falling to Boston College in a 3-0 shutout.
