Bruins win 2-1 at Arizona, but continues to struggle late in play

The Boston Bruins won their second straight game 2-1 against the Arizona Coyotes at Gila River Arena on Saturday.

The last time that Boston loss to Arizona was back in 2009 with a 4-1 defeat. The Bruins had a good first period of play gaining some good scoring opportunities, but were not able to find the back of the net. Boston ended the first period with 27 shots.

At 7:45 into the second period, Bruins center Ryan Spooner scored his third goal of the season with a Zdeno Chara shot flying off his skate into the opposing net past Arizona goaltender Loui Domingue. In this play Chara netted his 400th assist with Boston.

”He’s got a bomb,” Spooner said to MSN.com. ”I was kind of scared standing there but I’m glad it went into the back of the net.”

Two minutes later, right winger David Pastrnak scored his tenth goal of the season and made the score 2-0. This put Pastrnak in a tie with Pittsburg’s Sidney Crosby and Winnipeg’s Mark Scheifele for second most goals scored in the league. This was also his fifth goal in the past six games.

“When you see a kid come in with that much potential and when he really breaks out and has a year like he’s having now, it’s a lot of fun to see it,” said Bruins left-winger Marchand to csnne.com. “He’s going to be a great player in this league for a long time. He’s so fast and so skilled, and he does things with the puck that I don’t think opponents have seen before.”

In the third period of play Arizona right-winger Radim Vrbata, opened up the scoring for his team and made the game 2-1. Meanwhile Boston struggled and did not manage to even get a single shot on net.  

Bruins head coach Claude Julien was not impressed with his team’s win as they had struggles keeping their lead. With a 5-9-0 record, Arizona is currently last in both the Pacific Division and National Hockey League standings.

Julien said to NESN Sunday morning: “I didn’t like our second (period), didn’t like our third. Thought we were very soft and sloppy, and because of that, it ended up making it a nail biter. It wasn’t necessary, we could have handled it better and hopefully we learn from that.”

The Bruins have previously and still continue to struggle with their late period play. The Bruins have not been good in this latter play since 2012 when they outscored their opponents 60-23 in third period play by the time they reached January.

Goalie, Tuukka Rask continued to dominate, made 30 saves for the Bruins and improved to a record of 9-1-0. Rask’s only loss this season came against New York Rangers with a final score of 5-2.

“They had some chances, even in the first they had some good chances, right off the bat, the first shot was a good chance,” said Rask to bostonbruins.com. “Then in the second, there were a couple of good ones, then in the third a lot of scrambles and a lot of screen shots, and luckily we blocked a couple of shots and I was able to save a couple, but definitely not easy.”

With a win over Arizona the Bruins have won their last three out of four games and improve their record to 9-6-0. The Bruins head to Colorado to face the Avalanche on Sunday. The puck drops at 7 p.m. at the Pepsi Center.