Boston Bruins need to work harder on Columbus goalie Sergei Bobrovsky

The Columbus Blue Jackets were still looking for a playoff spot when the Bruins went to the Nationwide Arena and endorsed them with a 6-2 win.

Columbus star goalie Sergei Bobrovsky was unable to get out of the second period that night a few weeks ago. He was eliminated after conceding four goals on 23 shots.

In fact, Bobrovsky's record against the Bruins looks a lot like that night: 3-6-2, 0.889 percent savings in 12 regular-season games against Boston.

Yes, he has won the Vezina Trophy twice, but Bobrovsky is not Braden Holtby in terms of facing the Bruins.

So why did the Bruins seem to want to make him look like a Holtby clone in the second game of the second round of the Eastern Conference on Saturday? The Blue Jackets won 3-2 in overtime to tie the best of the 1-1 series against Columbus for Game 3 on Tuesday.

"You know, we have a way to generate more and you know, I think we can find a little more inside against them," said Bruins center Patrice Bergeron after the marathon defeat. "They do a good job playing us outside. But having said that, we need to find the means, watch the video and make sure we generate a little more. "

Bergeron may have been mistaken for tripping Seth Jones and taking the penalty that allowed Matt Duchene to score the winning goal, but Boston's deputy captain was not wrong to say where the chances came from. Bruins. The heat cards showed that the Blue Jackets were in the slot and at the top of the fold against Tuukka Rask, while the Bruins were between the hash marks and up against Bobrovsky.

To be fair, this inclination of the Bruins-Blue Jackets was more of a wear and tear than the first match. And Columbus has clearly improved his defensive game since his fight in March, and even since the match against Boston in early April.

But the Bruins should have enough offensive talent and the will to make life a little more difficult on Bobrovsky. The Bruins scored only 13 shots on goal in two periods. Four minutes from the end of regulation time, the total rose to about 18. High Slope Play, a game that gained popularity throughout the season and became the playoff game choice, was non-existent. . The screens in front of Bobrovsky came and went (but mostly) and the Bruins punched 22 balls in Columbus' bodies in 83 minutes and 42 seconds.

David Pastrnak scored five shots on goal, but one of them was his goal after Charlie Coyle, the only scorching Boston hand, did the work necessary to circle Columbus's net and get the puck out. Otherwise, Pastrnak was reduced to a perimeter overflight more interested in threading the needle with a pass than trying to punch through Bobrovsky. Brad Marchand has still not found his game and may need to walk on his own sticks to get started.

Similarly, Jake DeBrusk and Danton Heinen did not seem to be willing to run Bobrovsky, that is, until the Bruins pulled together in overtime and Bobrovsky showed the type of flexibility and ease. insight that he usually wears against unnamed Bruins teams.

This game should never have been in overtime. The Bruins should have paid early and overtook Bobrovsky before the first 60 minutes had expired.

In fact, they received a gift at 9:12 in the third period, when Cam Atkinson was called for tripping Torey Krug behind the Boston net. The Bruins' power play is the backbone of their attack. Well, in this case, he broke them in half. Columbus apparently had all the entries, all the passes in the middle and all the passes in the background, the attempts of the Bruins being generally memorized. Alex Wennberg, a guy Columbus did not think worthy of being in his lineup in these playoffs before Saturday, has twice broken the playoffs in the high zone.

Columbus and Bobrovsky escaped what should have been the Bruins' knife in their hearts.

It would not have been so scary if the Bruins had not scored their three goals in the third game against the Columbus blunders. A shorthanded goal from Noel Acciari that should have been stopped by Bobrovsky; Charlie Coyle's goal on an ice cross pass Marcus Johansson that all the Blue Jackets team watched pass as a pig runaway to the Ohio State Fair (that's a trick, n? is this not?); and the winning goal on Coyle's back gate to the net after Blue Jackets defender Zach Werenski stopped playing because he thought Danton Heinen had gone offside.

It was not a master class in the magnificent goal scored by the Bruins. And no one expects them to run five men or score points in a three-game breakaway in this slugfest series. But the Bruins should win their chances, succeed better than Columbus and use their post-season experience to warm the Blue Jackets, including Bobrovsky.

No wonder he was able to make some miraculous stops in overtime, the regulation being essentially a period of rest.

The Bruins would do better to tire Bobrovsky to advance it, otherwise they will have too much time to sleep until May.

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