BOSTON — The Florida Panthers showed up to TD Garden on Wednesday and punched the Bruins in the mouth.
Is that a tad harsh? Probably, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Florida was able to even its first-round Stanley Cup playoffs series with Boston at one game apiece in Game 2, capitalizing on a sloppy Bruins game and running away with a dominant third-period showing. It was an uncharacteristic game on the Bruins’ part. One that symbolized something new for the most dominant regular season team hockey has ever seen.
“It shows that they were a little hungrier than us, in a way,” Hampus Lindholm admitted postgame, per team-provided transcript. “I think we just have to clean (our turnovers) up. There’s some good stuff we can take from the game too, but overall, they worked a little harder tonight.”
The effort wasn’t lacking on the Bruins’ part, it was more so a lack of concentration and execution. That much wasn’t really in Boston’s vocabulary during the regular season, which led to questions as to whether the B’s were surprised with such a strong showing out of Florida.
“Not really,” Brad Marchand claimed postgame, per team-provided transcript. “We knew they were a really good team. They’re one of the harder teams that we played against all year. Again, very complete, very deep. That was with injuries. Now they have a majority of their guys back, especially their top guys.
“They won the Presidents’ Trophy last year. They didn’t change much. They added (Matthew) Tkachuk. So, they played hard, and we knew that they finished lower than what they are as a team. Again, playing against them a few times this year, I thought they were very, very difficult to play, and they’ve shown up. Like I said, they’re playing hard.”Â
The Bruins certainly didn’t expect to roll to a series sweep against the Panthers. Florida, after all, was just one of two games to take more than one game from Boston in the regular season. Boston knows what lies ahead in the series, which could end up seeing some changes made on both sides as the two teams jocky for position.
