October 31st, 2014
by Dakota Antelman
The Bruins moved back to 500 on the season with a 3-2 win over the Sabers in Buffalo. The victory was their first sealed in the overtime period this season and, like so many other games, it seemed to reassure fans of the team’s integrity.
After a painful late game collapse earlier this week in Minnesota, the Bruins entered this game suddenly lacking the services of not only Zdeno Chara but also Tory Krug. Furthermore, great worries were spawned during a Wednesday practice when reports began circulating that Brad Marchand had left practice with an apparent injury.
But when the team travelled to Buffalo, they filled the void left by Krug with AHL’er Joe Morrow and Marchand was revealed to be healthy enough to start the game.
In fact by night’s end, Marchand had, by virtue of his sheer actions, proved his health.
He scored two goals in the contest. The first came midway through the third period and ultimately tied the game while the second ended it in overtime.
"Brad has been having a slow start to the season and, again, in the third period he just showed his true colors and what he can do when he decides to play the way he can," coach Claude Julien said. "He's got good speed and he can be pretty slippery, but he's been playing a lot on the outside with the puck and without it and it doesn't bode well for him. So it's nice to see him get rewarded with the things that he needs to do, so hopefully that encourages him to do a little bit more."
Marchand’s goals were just his second and third of the season. The winning goal, a cross bar down wrist shot from the hash marks was hailed by many of his teammates as one of the best of the year.
Marchand however digressed and heaped some of the praise on his teammates.
"It was a great play by Dougie [Hamilton] to get it over to [Reilly]," Marchand said. "[I] saw him coming off the bench and I just tried to pop open for [Smith] and he made a great pass and I was just lucky it went in."
Beyond Marchand, defender Adam McQuaid scored his first goal in over a calendar year while Niklas Svedberg stopped 13 of 15 shots and made several clutch saves late in regulation.
“This was a game that we really wanted to win,” Marchand said. “We didn’t want to go down two games below .500, especially with the way we finished last game. We wanted to make sure we had a big effort tonight, and we came out with a win.”
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