BOSTON — The last man remaining on the ice Tuesday night at TD Garden was the one everybody was there to see.
Milan Lucic, a Bruins fan favorite during his eight seasons in black and gold, capped his wildly successful return to Boston with a postgame lap around the Garden ice, soaking in the adoration of the few B’s diehards who stuck around to see the end of their team’s 9-2 loss to Lucic’s new team, the Los Angeles Kings.
The bruising winger, who tallied a goal and an assist in the blowout win and received thunderous cheers throughout the night, said his victory lap was a spur-of-the-moment decision.
“I didn’t have it planned,” Lucic said. “A couple of teammates there told me to go out and do it. I just remembered being back in Calgary when (former Bruins winger Jarome Iginla) did it, so I felt like doing it. So like I said, now I can finally — as much as I was looking forward to this game, I’m glad it’s finally over so I can kind of stop thinking about it and just focus on the rest of the road trip and all those type of things.”
Lucic was the star of the show on a miserable night for his old team, which surrendered more goals than it had in any game since 2008. Kings players also pelted the Boston goaltending duo of Tuukka Rask (five goals against) and Jonas Gustavsson (four) with 57 shots — the most allowed by a Bruins team since 1965.
“You’re here to win a game, you know,” said Lucic, who received a video tribute and a standing ovation during a first-period timeout. “You win by one, you win by seven — doesn’t matter, a win’s a win. So, if it was 3-2, you’re still happy about the win. So, I guess you can’t feel too bad, you come in here trying to get those bragging rights and have it over your former teammates. It was a full-team effort from the net out, and I was glad to get that win.”
Some additional notes from Tuesday’s action:
— The offensive display the Kings put on was nothing short of staggering. Fifteen different L.A. players tallied at least one point, and nine finished with two. The Kings also boasted nine different goal-scorers, making them the fourth team to accomplish such a feat in the last 20 years, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
Brayden McNabb, Alec Martinez and Jordan Nolan were the only Kings players who failed to record a point in the win.
— Brad Marchand and Tyler Randell provided what little offense Boston could muster, with Marchand scoring his 10th goal in 10 games (and team-high 25th of the season) and Randell falling an assist shy of a Gordie Howe hat trick in his first shot at playing time since Jan. 9.
Randell, who was a healthy scratch for the Bruins’ previous 12 contests, has been a bizarrely efficient goal-scorer in his first NHL season, leading the league with 2.09 goals per 60 minutes, according to statistics compiled by War-On-Ice for players with more than 100 minutes of ice time. He leads the runner-up in that category, Chicago’s Richard Panik, by 0.55 — a massive margin.
The Bruins rookie has scored on five of his 14 shots on goal this season.
— Tuesday marked the 50th anniversary of the Kings’ inception as a franchise. The team commemorated the occasion by wearing its “forum gold” throwback uniforms.
“A bit of a coincidence that we’re wearing out yellow jerseys here tonight, so (I’ll have) a bit of gold on,” Lucic joked before the game. “So, that might make it a little easier.”
The Bruins also mixed things up in the uniform department by wearing their road whites at home.
— Bruins defenseman Adam McQuaid missed his 15th consecutive game as he continues his recovery from an upper body injury. Head coach Claude Julien said there is “not a definitive timeline” for McQuaid’s return to game action.
“I think he’s getting better and better, and I think a lot of it will be about him feeling like he’s ready to go right now,” Julien said. “So, I think he’s improving a lot, with that extra skating that he’s doing and everything else, I think. I think my biggest concern with Adam was the fact that he was out almost five weeks. It’s like (David) Pastrnak — he was out five weeks. You see he’s just starting to come around now. So, we want to make sure he’s well and ready to go, because we’ve got some defensemen right now that are doing a decent job, so I don’t want to throw him in there too early.”
McQuaid did participate in Tuesday’s morning skate, and Julien said there is a chance he could return to the lineup before the end of the team’s six-game road trip, which begins Thursday night in Winnipeg.
Photo via Greg M. Cooper/USA TODAY Sports Images
Thumbnail photo via Winslow Townson/Associated Press
