Bruce Cassidy knew his stars’ times would come, but he probably didn’t expect them to happen simultaneously.
The Boston Bruins head coach paid tribute to some of his star players Saturday, following their thrilling 7-5 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins. Brad Marchand notched a hat trick, David Pastrnak scored twice, and David Krejci and Patrice Bergeron each chipped in with one goal — in addition to all of their assists — in the Bruins’ triumph.
Cassidy, who shuffled the Bruins’ lines ahead of the game, credited Boston’s star power for the bonanza of goals.
“Well it’s in the room,” Cassidy said during his postgame video conference. “It was all our top guys. Obviously you’re going to have games like this throughout the course of the year. With the type of resumes they have, Pastrnak, Marchand, Bergeron, Krejci, these guys are going to have some days (like this). We just haven’t had a lot of them for whatever reason. I thought the goals we scored today were excellent. There were no flukey ones, no freebies, other than the empty-netter … so nice plays. High-end plays by high-end players.”
Here are some other notes from Saturday’s Bruins-Penguins Game:
— Pastrnak, whom Cassidy moved to the second line, believes the seven-goal outburst will boost the team’s confidence for the stretch run.
“It was nice, obviously,” Pastrnak said. “It’s definitely going to work to our confidence. You know, obviously, had some trouble scoring lately so overall a huge two points and to score seven goals, it’s great. And you know it’s been a while since we had hats on the Garden (ice) so that’s obviously fun, saw some bunny ears, so obviously fun. A big win today and going to rest up and get ready for Monday.”
The Bruins scored five of their goals during the wild second period. They trailed 1-0 after the first period, and Pastrnak revealed their mindset coming out of intermission.
“You know, I think we were just tired of it. We had a tough start and we said ‘Enough’ and we wanted to come into the second period really hard and just put the puck deep, get our forecheck going, get our legs — you know, 1 o’clock games sometimes you can’t find the legs so it takes a while — and that was our main focus in the second period. … Then got scoring opportunities and today we capitalized on them. So, I think that was a huge part.”
— Krejci recoreded his 500th career assist, becoming the seventh Boston and fifth Czech player in NHL history to reach the milestone.
