Preseason RECAP: Bruins cruise to 3-1 win with goals from Cehlarik, Clifton

Now THAT’S more like it!

First Period:

The game essentially started with the Bruins setting the tone by essentially controlling play for much of the early goings, and Charlie Coyle made himself known with a fantastic pass out front that Danton Heinen snapped home for a very early 1-0 Bruins lead!

Always good to just have a shot go directly where you want it to. Just in and out.

Unfortunately, things wouldn’t go perfectly for Halak’s otherwise phenominal first period, as one of the other hallmarks of the game were bizarre shorthanded chances and confusion in front of the goalie, and that could not be more of what happened as Clifton and Lauzon were caught moving, and Matt Niskanen wired a shot over Jaro’s blocker, and tied the game. 1-1.

Just the perfect, unfortunate coalescence of mistakes that created a goal-against. Good shot too, can’t take that away either.

Halak also redeemed himself by making an absolutely absurd behind the back save after a rebound.

Sucks to be you, Morgan Frost.

Thankfully, no further damage occured (except to Anton Blidh, who appeared to disappear after this and the next period), and we move onto Frame 2!

2nd Period:

The rest of the game could best be described as throwing the Flyers into a pressure cooker. They just ran them completely out of the building, and there were long, 30 second or close-to-minute shifts where the B’s just laid into the Flyers.

Finally, they capitalized with a little bit of Celery cleaning up another crazy Coyle shift with help from Brendan Gaunce drawing people away from the goal. 2-1 Bruins!

Not just a great play by Gaunce, but great instincts by Cehlarik to get where he needed to be in order to put the puck in and setting the puck up for Gaunce to get the pass off beforehand. What a sequence.

Of course, the B’s basically locked the whole game down after that, so to the final frame we go!

Third Period:

Second period’s verse, same here. Flyers just couldn’t overcome the B’s forecheck, and spent a lot of time in their own end, usually attempting to get even by a fast break, and all of whom were stopped by third period goalie Maxime Legace, who still had a dang Vegas bucket.

C’mon kid, get with the program.

Finally, the B’s took full and complete control of the score after one of very many penalties they were assessed, when the puck took an absolutely wild bounce and the free man Connor Clifton was able to get to the puck first before the Flyers, and showed that Cliffy Hockey is making a strong case for sticking around. 3-1 Bruins!

Seriously what made you think diving for the puck with that kind of bounce, Flyers D-man?

The clock became Philly’s enemy, and it was one they couldn’t overcome. B’s walked away with the win!

Game Notes:

• Night and day kind of effort, but a big part of that was facing a much more passive Flyers squad that didn’t appear super interested in pressing the advantage whatsoever. A big part of that was Charlie Coyle’s line being all over the place. Just an absolute domination.
• It’s really hard to say that the B’s had trouble in this game when they just controlled it from bell to bell. They never let the game go and the last two periods just hammered it home.
• Much better night for Vaakanainen as he didn’t end up making any super impressive decisions that led to goals (for or against), but was always trying to make something happen, getting the puck out, and had a much smoother, more low-key game overall. He and Clifton got a total 21 minutes as TOI leaders, with Cliff getting a minute more of time at even strength.
• SPEAKING OF WHICH...Connor Clifton had a wild night. Part of the group on the ice for the lone goal-against, got a few dumb penalties, and then got the game-sealer goal on a beautiful chance. Cliffy Hockey never said it had to make you feel like everything was totally under control, right?
• Cooper Zech sure likes taking the Torey Krug shot of “this isn’t gonna go in, but it’ll cause trouble”. He had a pretty good game!
• Peter Cehlarik showed his favorite skillsets; getting penalties-against and goalscoring while around the net by just being smart. Hopefully he can cut down on the first part.
• Considering that he made Sportscenter, Halak had a pretty good night. Maxime Legace by contrast just had to hold the fort. He did just that.

One more sleep, and we’re back at it with a game against the Blackhawks! See you then!