Boston-Montreal: Bruins Double Up Montreal in Original Six Preseason Rivalry

Hi and welcome to the preseason of the NHL's 2010-11 season.

The season where nothing and everything matters.

Boston is starting anew with a lot of new faces and hopefully a better result than the crushing "3-0 lead in the conference semifinals only to lose it in seven against a resilient Philadelphia Flyers" end to last season.

Montreal suffered the same fate of going to the links at the hands of the Flyers squad in the conference finals.

Boston's first game was against the "Original Six" rival Montreal Canadiens at the Bell Centre.

First Period

Boston started off in a flurry with three goals.

Nathan Horton got his first as a Bruin on his first shot at just 1:33 into the game.

Johnny Boychuk got the second on a power-play goal, and Patrice Bergeron notched one to fill the scoreboard on the B's side to 3-0 after the first period.

Price seemed a little shaky but each team is expected to got through the jitters in the preseason.

Second Period

Boston continued the scoring with a Bergeron shorthanded goal from a bad clearing attempt on the Habs part.  Bergeron got the jump on the blue line to keep it in the Montreal zone and got a clear breakaway to fake Price on his left side.  Bergeron got his second goal and put the black and gold up 4-0.

Rookie goalie Curtis Sanford took over between the pipes for the Habs not long after that.  It wasn't because he was chased but rather it was a scheduled change to allow Sanford to play the second half of the game.

Maxime LaPierre got the Habs on the board with a shorthanded goal of his own and the score was 4-1.

The play was broken up at the neutral zone and a nice pass made by a surging Tomas Plekanec went over a sprawled out Tuuka Rask on his left side.

With 37 seconds left of the second frame, Tomas Plekanec scored on the power play to put the game at 4-2 in favor of the Bruins.

So 40 minutes up and gone, all three goals scored are on the power play, but not exactly what you expected.

Third Period

Michael Cammalleri nearly got the Habs within a goal when his shot beat Rask on the right side but it didn't beat the posts.  The puck bounced on the inside of the right post then the left post and out to keep the game at a final score of 4-2.

For the most part, Montreal had the better control of the period, but Boston kept them in check.  Not bad considering they didn't have Chara or Thornton in the lineup to make things harder for the Habs.

All in all, the youngsters did fairly well but room for improvement is definitely there.

Next preseason game, Boston goes south to Rochester, NY for a tilt against the Florida Panthers on Thursday, Sept 23rd at 7PM EST.

This is Cory Ducey saying "Hit Hard, But Keep It Clean"