Boston Bruins Exorcise New Jersey Devils, Restore Early Season Characteristics

With the return of Brad Marchand and Rich Peverley, all of the Boston Bruins regulars of the 2011-12 season reunited Thursday night at New Jersey’s Prudential Center for the final installment of a four-game road trip.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, many of the season’s head-turning trends re-emerged and reconvened on the Bruins bench as part of a come-from-behind, 4-1 victory over the Devils.

The refreshing upshot was made possible largely by goaltender Tim Thomas’ stingy persistence through the first 40 minutes. At that point, New Jersey had sculpted a 23-12 advantage in the shooting gallery but only a 1-0 edge on the board.

The triumph was officially realized when Boston’s offense unleashed the same sort of carbonation and quickness that flowed on a routine basis in November and parts of December. Goals came in bunches and overwhelmed the adversary in the more climactic, defining stages of the game.

Entering the second intermission, the Bruins had not pelted Devils stopper Martin Brodeur since Tyler Seguin tipped one on the net with 7:56 left. That was followed by three wide attempts, the last one off the blade of Johnny Boychuk with still 4:20 to spare.

All the while, New Jersey was subsisting on Petr Sykora’s strike from the waning phases of the first period. Brodeur was soon the first netminder to keep the Bruins scoreless for two full periods since Jose Theodore on Dec. 8.

If there was anything affording a Boston buff a little gratification, it was Thomas responding to his dismantling in Tampa Bay on Tuesday and keeping the match competitive.

But to commence the closing frame, the Bruins suddenly released nine unanswered shots on goal within the first 7:45 of game action. New Jersey’s only attempt in that time frame was a slapper off the pipe via defenseman Mark Fayne.

And exactly one-third of those nine stabs penetrated Brodeur, all but instantaneously morphing the 1-0 deficit into a 3-1 lead. Andrew Ference’s second shot in as many shifts drew a 1-1 knot at 3:01; Nathan Horton busted the tie on a power-play conversion at 7:10, and Gregory Campbell submitted a dose of insurance at 7:45.

Those three goals within 4:44 constituted Boston’s most fruitful sugar rush since Patrice Bergeron, Chris Kelly and Horton all burned Calgary backstop Leland Irving in a span of 2:56 two weeks to date.

On Thursday, Horton and Campbell were the first pair of Bruins to tune the mesh less than a minute apart since Bergeron and Daniel Paille pulled it off in Ottawa back on Dec. 14

Horton supplied the go-ahead goal that the Bruins could not grant Thomas against the Lightning, even with three equalizers. With Campbell’s tally, they had a multi-goal cushion that they twice could have attained in a fall-from-ahead, 4-2 falter in Carolina last Saturday and a 3-2 shootout triumph in Florida on Monday.

Between visits to New Jersey, which were only separated by 15 nights, Thomas had four leads to defend over four starts. The only one of those four that did not fully evaporate was a 2-0 lead that morphed into a 2-1 victory over Montreal last Thursday.

Within 75 seconds of Campbell’s goal, the Devils splashed their drought and issued five unanswered stabs within 84 seconds. But Thomas maintained the two-goal edge, summoning two whistles in the process to tone down the blizzard of biscuits.

For that, he is just as indebted to his praetorian guards as vice versa. Thomas snapped only his second two-game losing streak of the season, in part because the Bruins strike force restored Boston’s reputation as a band of phenomenal finishers.

The Bruins entered Thursday night’s action with the second-most third-period goals in the league, having compiled 63 over their first 43 games. Their plus-33 differential in the closing stanza was good for the NHL’s best.

During the southern portion of their road trip, however, they had played a mutually scoreless closing frame against the Panthers and decisively lost the final stanza to Carolina and Tampa by identical 3-1 scores.

Those two losses happened to be Thomas starts. And in each of his two preceding outings against Montreal and Vancouver, the Bruins had tied the opposition, 1-1, in the third.

Thursday night presented a luxury that Thomas had not savored since, well, his last outing in New Jersey, when the Bruins padded on three unanswered goals to polish off a 6-1 win.

It should be mentioned, though, that not everything is quite like it was for the better part of the first half.

Up next on Thomas’ agenda is an attempt at his first winning streak in the new calendar year.