Bruins veterans shine in 6-1 demolition of Flyers: Iginla, Chara both score twice proving that the young call ups are not the only thing that helps this team

Zdeno Chara looks real big in that picture not only because the man on his right stands at just 5 feet 9 inches but also because his 2 goals had his team and he flying high en route to a win labeled by many as their best of the season.

Fact is for many veteran guys on this team, the shocking, unexpected work of guys like Ryan Spooner, Kevin Millar, Reilly Smith, Torey Krug, and Matt Bartowski has stolen their thunder this season as well as steeling their points. Reilly Smith leads the team in goals scored, while Kevin Millar has outhit, massive Johnny Boychuck himself. Even guys like Matt Fraser have made their mark in Boston as that 23 year old right winger helped provide a much needed aspect of physicality for the team especially during last month's Shawn Thornton suspension.

Fact is with all these injures to top players like Dennis Sidenberg and Adam McQuaid, the unexpected talents of these rookie call ups and 1st year starters has been one of the biggest reasons the Bruins are the best team in the Atlantic Division this season, but nevertheless, they are not all of it. Through the first 50 games of this season, Chara has quietly assembled quite a goal tally. He is on pace to tie his career high in goals of 19 and actually leads the Bruins in power play goals with 8. At 37 years old, Chara is playing 25 minutes per game and yet he is taking the fewest penalties of his career. If one were to call Zdeno Chara a star than they would have seen him shining Saturday afternoon in Philly. The 6 foot 9 inch defencemen assembled his best statistical game of the season scoreing 2 goals, taking 4 shots while blocking 4 more. For Big Zee, his 10th and 11th goals of the year snapped a 15 game goalless streak and undoubtedly provided backing to his being named the CCzechoslovakian flag bearer for the 2014 Winter Olympics but he was not the only veteran snapping streaks during Saturday's game.

Like Chara, 36 year old Jarome Iginla who has been praised this year for his rookie like drive to win his first Stanley Cup of his carrer had, despite logging 15 goals in this season not scored since January first and was caught in his longest scoreing drought as a Bruin. However, in true Iginla fashion, he snapped that trend via his 21st carrer 4 point game scoreing 2 goals and assisting on 2 more. Of those 4 points 3 of them were logged on the power play scoreing 1 of Boston's 3 power play goals midway through the 3rd period. Even David Krejci was a huge force in this game assisting on 3 out of 6 goals each one better than the last.

"I thought, right from the drop, every single guy was ready to go," said Iginla "And it was a fun game to play, for sure."

As Iginla hinted at, the Bruins were almost constantly scoreing distributing their 6 goals evenly over all 3 periods and never going more than 15 minutes between goals. Late in the 3rd, when Jordan Caron took a brutal high stick to the jaw, chipping a tooth and knocking out another the Bruins scored twice on the ensuing double minor penalty. Those goals were separated by just 55 seconds and effectively turned this game from a convincing win to a full out obliteration of the struggling Flyers. 

But back to the story of veteran contributions. While the works of Zdeno Chara, Jarome Iginla and David Krejci were all offensive, Tuukka Rask proved to the world that while last season was great and while he has struggled at times this season he is still having a career year in 2013-2014. He stopped 25 out of 26 shots, held a shutout through the first 47:55 of the game and overall, lead the team to their 23rd win of the season with him between the pipes. In this his 39th start of the season, he has already topped his career high in wins set back in 2009 and furthermore is on pace to up that total to nearly 38 wins by years end. 

"Yeah, it was great," Rask said as he was swarmed by reporters following the game, "Really kept it going the whole 60 minutes. I think the first period was the most even, both teams had chances, and we ended up scoring. And the good thing is, that we never let our guard down, we just kept pushing and getting more goals."

"Great game."

In a game that Philadelphia captain Claude Giroux labeled as "the most embarrassing" of his carrer, the Bruins distributed their wealth across 8 different players, snapping streaks and reviving memories of the kind of dominant routs powered by veterans that the Bruins so artfully enjoyed back in their Championship winning 2011 season. For 3 hours Saturday afternoon, the Bruins never quit, never stopped pressing and never stopped working. All of those qualities are ones that can only be fully mastered by those who know this league like the back of their hand and that was shown Saturday vs. the Flyers.