Alex Lyon, the Panthers’ 30-year-old Cinderella story of a goalie, made some great saves Monday night. Unfortunately for Florida, he also made a couple mistakes.
Linus Ullmark did not, and that is the biggest reason Boston won 3-1 to take a 1-0 series lead.
No Bergeron, no problem for Bruins in Game 1
The Bruins did not have their ‘A’ game Monday. They may not have even had their ‘B.’ The Panthers controlled 5-on-5 play for much of the night and held a 21-10 shots on goal advantage halfway through the game.
Patrice Bergeron missing the game due to an illness and/or an upper-body injury did not help matters. Neither did the likelihood that at least one or two other unnamed Bruins were also “under the weather,” to use Jim Montgomery’s terminology from morning skate.
What the Bruins did have, though, was Ullmark, the winner of the NHL’s triple crown of goaltending and the expected winner of the Vezina Trophy.
Ullmark stopped 31 of the 32 shots he faced. Whatever concerns there may have been after he exited his final start of the regular season last Tuesday quickly evaporated, especially with how much he was tested early. The Panthers were throwing everything at the net, often with plenty of traffic around it.
Montgomery thought his team had some “nerves” early and may have been “surprised” by the intensity of playoff hockey. That’s one of those things that can happen when you have one team that’s been fighting for its playoff life for months and one that’s been locked into the top seed for seemingly just as long. Fortunately for the Bruins, those nerves didn’t extend to Ullmark.
“I thought he was excellent,” Montgomery said of his goalie. “I thought he was cool, calm, just real confident, seeing the puck really well, steering rebounds. It looked like there was a lot of chaos at our net. They took a lot of shots at bad angles, and he’s just great at steering pucks to bad areas or smothering them up. It really provides us a lot of confidence, allows us to control the chaos, so to speak.”
Ullmark wasn’t tested as often in the third period, as the Bruins finally seemed to get to their 5-on-5 game and outshot the Panthers 13-8 in the period while protecting the 3-1 lead. But he did still make a couple grade-A saves, turning away point-blank chances from Sam Reinhart early in the third and Brandon Montour later in the period.
Lyon made some point-blank saves for Florida as well, most notably twice robbing Trent Frederic on 2-on-1 feeds from Taylor Hall. But he didn’t handle the “chaos” quite as well, losing track of rebounds on David Pastrnak and Jake DeBrusk’s goals. And he gave up one of those goals you just can’t surrender in the playoffs, whiffing with his glove on a long wrister from Brad Marchand.
So much has been made of the Bruins’ depth, and rightly so. It was on display once again Monday night, with offseason acquisition Pavel Zacha filling in admirably for Bergeron and midseason addition Tyler Bertuzzi shining in his first NHL playoff game.
But the single biggest advantage the Bruins had over the rest of the NHL this season was their goaltending. Their .929 team save percentage was 14 points better than any other team and 30 points better than the league average.
It is hard to imagine any team beating them in a seven-game series if Ullmark, or Jeremy Swayman if called upon, continues to play at such an elite level. Any formula for beating the Bruins almost requires their goaltending to slip up, the opponent’s goaltending to be nearly perfect, or both.
Ullmark didn’t slip up in Game 1 (there was little he could have done on the one goal he did allow), and Lyon was far from perfect. As a result, the Bruins, even without Bergeron and without their ‘A’ game, cruised to a relatively comfortable win, leading nearly wire-to-wire.
The Bruins will have better games than Monday. They are expected to get Bergeron back at some point. If the Panthers can’t figure out a way to change the goaltending equation, they probably won’t be changing the result either.
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