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Friday, April 15, 2011

Here we go again


It only took the Boston Bruins 2:44 in the first period to remind its fans what they're in for this postseason.

Former Boston College star Brian Gionta capitalized on Tomas Kaberle's terrible blind clearing pass attempt and gave Montreal an early 1-0 lead.

The Bruins never seemed to get untracked from there as they lost 2-0 in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals last night at TD Garden.

Gionta's first goal was assisted by Scott Gomez. The pair teamed up one more time with 3:18 left in the third period to seal this one. Milan Lucic was the culprit that time as he had the puck stolen off his stick in his own zone.

Gionta skated in on Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas (18 saves) and roofed it on a shot that Thomas deflected and truthfully has to stop if Boston hopes to get anywhere past the first or second round (which apparently GM Peter Chiarelli doesn't care about).

Montreal goaltender Carey Price made 31 saves for the shutout but other than the second period (when Boston outshot Montreal 18-6), he wasn't really tested that much.

Boston fell back into its bad habits of just trying to score from the point every time. Doesn't matter if it's Zdeno Chara cranking slap shots from back there, unless you have traffic in front of Price, those are probably not going in. Too bad nobody on the Black and Gold seemed to understand that.

It's hard to be positive about the Bs after last night's performance gave you a week's worth of things to keep you up at night. Needless to say, tomorrow night is a must-win. Boston simply cannot go to Montreal down 2-0. It's hard enough to play at the Bell Centre in front of all those yahoos but the Bruins need to take care of business on their home ice.

Along those same lines, the first goal of Game 2 is huge. Once Montreal scored a goal, they were able to morph into a defensive shell and were happy to let Boston basically tire themselves out and then the Canadiens capitalized on their best chance. You have to put pressure on Montreal by scoring first, then you can get physical and pummel them. Not the other way around.

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