Retaliation dooms Bruins: In violent game against Montreal, Bruins see their 12 game win streak snapped in the shootout

It was the most violent, nasty, old fashioned hockey game the Bruins had played in a long time. With 40 penalty minutes, and 4 either roughing of cross checking penalties assessed the statistics it produced confirmed that. And lastly, the feel in Boston Monday night also reflected the fact that we had just been treated to something special. A world class beat down between bitter rivals as well their thirst to live both in the magic of their history and the promise of their respective futures. Even in loss, Mondays game between the Bruins and Canadians was something that we only rarely see and so, from start to finish, the atmosphere inside the garden was one of excitement and bitter hatred for the guys in red and white.

Things were nasty right from the get-go.

Just 1 minute and 19 seconds into the game, the Canadians version of Brad Marchand - Alexi Emilin - caught 228 pound Bruin monster - Milan Lucic - in his sights. But as Lucic came across the Spoked B at center ice and Emilin went to deliver the hit, instead of going straight up on the man who was bigger than him in every quality, Emilin dropped down and delivered a crushing center ice hip check right to Lucic's lower thigh. The Bruin forwards was literally flipped 360 degrees and after he slid for a few feet, he crashed violently into the boards. The hit was without a doubt clean but nevertheless, it was delivered in a situation where a straight up shoulder check is more commonly delivered. Also, the speed and ferocity at which the hit flipped the big body of Milan Lucic at first glance pointed strongly towards the hit being delivered more to the knee of Lucic than he front of his thigh or even his lower abdomen which would have been a clipping penalty and would have earned Emelin an automatic 5 minute major. The combination of all of these apparent factors led Bruins captain Zdeno Chara to make a bee line for Emilin who he proceeded to mash into the ice with a check, slash with his stick and then punch in the head earning him a 2 minute roughing penalty.

After the game, Lucic was enraged by the cowardliness of Emilin's hit.

"Whether it's fair, legal or whatever you want to call it, if he wasn't scared, he would stand up and hit me and not go after my knees," Lucic said of Emelin. "It just shows how big of a chicken he is that he needs to go down like that to take me down. It shows what kind of player he is, and on my end, you know you've got to keep your guard up at all times."

By the way, that comment did not help to extinguish the feeling of excitement about the game after it ended.

Within minutes of the Emilin incident, Kevin Miller shoved Montreal forward Dale Weis from behind as the two skated in towards the boards. While Weis did have a little time to protect his head from a direct collision with the boards he was visibly injured as he skated off the ice. Seeing this, 31 year old Montreal tough guy - Travis Moen - went after Miller ready to drop the gloves. Miller obliged but gave Moen a little more than he thought he was getting. Miller tagged Moen once on the shoulder and then slammed a huge right hook into Moen's ear. But Miller was not done. He dragged Moen back to his feet and proceeded to wreck Moen's face. He landed 2 more knocks to the head of Moen before his arm was tied up. As the two spun towards the boards however, he finally got his fits loose and slammed the punch of the year into Moen's temple. 

Travis Moen would have to be helped off the ice. 

In just seconds, Montreal had lost two of its best players. But none of that stopped the physicality of this game. During the Miller penalty assessed as a result of the cross check of Weis, Emilin scored a power play goal to give the Canadians the lead. 

But the game was not over and while the Bruins knew they needed to tie the game as soon as possible, they were still caught up in that hatred for the Habs that would only be fulfilled when a player was knocked on his backside every time he touched the puck. 3 minutes into the 2nd period, Brad Marchand and the hated PK Subban got tangled in a fight for the puck that resulted in Marchand's clipping Subban up high with his stick. 

Towards the end of the period, the Bruins were penilised again when Carl Soderberg basically body slammed goaltender, Peter Budaj as Zdeno Chara took a point shot. But even that was not the end of things. 

In the final 2 minutes of the period, with the Bruins already killing a penalty, PK Subban delivered a hip check to Johnny Boychuck along the boards and then shoved him while he was down. Once Boychuck got up, he proceeded to throw two punches at Subban and then violently slam him into the ice. He was penilised for roughing but was lucky he was not kicked out of the game. Finally however, the Bruins got things under control and in the 3rd period it was Montreal who was undisciplined. They took 4 penalties in the period and allowed the Bruins to drag the game back via a Patrice Bergeron tip in of a Zdeno Chara slapshot. 

But for Boston it was too little to late. 

Montreal won the game in the shootout. 

But even though they lost their historic 12 game win streak, the Bruins were positive as they remain a team who has had just 1 game without a point in the month of March. 

"Obviously, you don't want to lose the way that you do in shootouts, especially getting all the chances that we did during the third period, but with 10 games left, now you've got to expect every game to be like that," Bruins forward Milan Lucic said. "Look at our last stretch of eight games in 13 days. We were able to get 15 out of 16 points, so that's pretty good. Unfortunately, the winning streak comes to an end tonight, but we've got to look forward to the next one."

But a win like this for Montreal could be troubling for Bruins fans not because they could knock Boston out of any positioning whatsoever in the regular season but more so because as it stands a playoff meeting between the Bruins and Canadians is not an unlikely possibility and a win like this could give Montreal momentum going into such a meeting. 

"It's a big win for us, for sure," the Canadiens' Brian Gionta said. "By no means was it a perfect game, but it showed a lot of character sticking with it and battling through. That first period, we were just kind of hanging on, but we pushed back in the second, got in some penalty trouble in the third but showed a lot of character on that penalty kill. Unfortunately, they scored on one, but I thought we did a good job with them."

But regardless of that, the Bruins lost a game Monday that they could have won if it were not for their inability to stay out of the penalty box. 

"At times, absolutely," said Julien, when asked if 'undisciplined' is a way he would describe the game. "The Marchand penalty was frustration because he got tripped on the faceoff before — it wasn’t called. Those are things that are going to happen in a game and you can’t retaliate by taking a bad penalty."

"[Johnny] Boychuk’s penalty was a bad one too, so you know, there’s discipline, but they didn’t score on those, so that’s not why we lost. But I think we have to be better disciplined against them."