Starting lineups in hockey aren’t always especially notable. Teams often don’t start their best players. They might look to get a certain matchup instead, or they might start a third or fourth line that they hope can set the tone with some energy and physicality.
Occasionally, however, you do get those star-on-star starting lineups that catch your eye. Thursday night at TD Garden was one of those games.
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For the visiting Colorado Avalanche: Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Jonathan Drouin, Cale Makar and Devon Toews, with Alexandar Georgiev in net.
For the Boston Bruins: David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, Charlie Coyle, Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm, with Jeremy Swayman in net.
Three of the NHL’s top six scorers in MacKinnon, Pastrnak and Rantanen. The league’s highest-scoring defenseman in Makar. Two other defensemen who have top-five Norris Trophy finishes on their resumes in McAvoy and Lindholm. A four-time All-Star in Marchand. An All-Star goalie in Swayman.
Right from puck drop, this was going to be a battle of the stars. It was a battle the Bruins would win, and a game they would win 5-2, with the first shift of the night setting the tone.
The Bruins immediately went to work in the offensive zone, forcing the Avs’ stars to defend and landing a couple early shots on goal. Just as Makar finally gained possession for Colorado with a chance to alleviate the pressure, Coyle poked the puck away from him and right to Pastrnak, who turned and rifled a shot top shelf to give Boston a 1-0 lead just 44 seconds in.
“We know from the last time we played them that they rely on that line heavily, and we really like our top-end players,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery told NESN after the game. “Putting Lindholm and McAvoy together, you’ve got two studs like that matching up against their best line, plus Coyle-Marchand-Pasta. I think that we can go power-for-power against anybody that way.”
They proved that Thursday night. You can’t get much more powerful than that top unit the Avalanche can roll out, and the Bruins’ own top five went toe-to-toe with them all night and ceded little ground. Each of Marchand, Coyle, Pastrnak, McAvoy and Lindholm played at least 10 5-on-5 minutes against MacKinnon and at least nine against Makar. That accounted for roughly two-thirds of their total 5-on-5 ice time.
The Avalanche did not score when their top line had to face the Bruins’ top line or top D pair. MacKinnon did score Colorado’s second goal, but that came when he was able to change on during an offensive-zone possession before the Bruins could get their top guys on the ice.
Across the board, the Bruins’ stars seemed to relish the challenge. Pastrnak shone the brightest, recording his 18th career hat trick (including playoffs). He opened the scoring and closed it. With the Bruins leading 3-2 late in the third, he added the insurance marker when he finished off a great pass from Jake DeBrusk for a power-play goal. Then he added another with an empty-netter to cap off the hat trick.
“Those are fun, obviously,” Pastrnak said of matching up with MacKinnon and Makar. “You always want to play against the top players. … It’s obviously challenging, and good motivation to play against them.”
Coyle is the one Bruin here who wouldn’t have been part of a star-on-star matchup like this last season, but he took another step towards proving he can hang as the No. 1 center in a game like this on Thursday. He’s the one who stole the puck from Makar on the opening goal, and then he stole it from MacKinnon on Pastrnak’s empty-netter.
“You have to be on top of your game against a line like that, with their firepower over there,” Coyle said. “You have to play the right way. You can't cheat it. … It gets you up for the game even more, and you take a lot of pride in trying to shut those guys down, but play our game and bring our game to them. It's not just all about shutting them down. That's first and foremost, but we want to contribute as well.”
The Bruins didn’t just win the battle of the stars, though. They also got more contributions from elsewhere in the lineup. If it weren’t for Pastrnak’s hat trick, the star of the game would have been Jake DeBrusk, who was excellent at both ends of the ice. He scored Boston’s third goal with a pretty deflection of a Parker Wotherspoon shot. He made a great pass to set up Pastrnak’s second goal. He had several great backchecks to break up Colorado chances. And for part of the second period, he flipped spots with Pastrnak and took on MacKinnon/Makar matchup duties.
“It seems to be getting repetitive here in the second half. It seems like every game is his best game of the year,” Montgomery said of DeBrusk. “That’s a credit to him, because his details and habits – that play to Pasta, that’s a high-end play.”
The Bruins also got a goal from an unlikely source, as Jakub Lauko – usually a fourth-liner, but a third-liner via lineup juggling on Thursday – scored his first goal of the season in the first period, finishing off a nice tic-tac-toe passing play started by Lindholm.
It took the whole team to close out the win, too. The Avalanche had made a strong push in the second period, outshooting the Bruins 16-8 and cutting Boston’s lead to 3-2. In the third period, however, the Bruins gave the Avs nothing, limiting the NHL’s second-best offense to just four shots on goal.
“Really good. One of the better periods that we've had trying to protect a one-goal lead,” Montgomery said. “We had poise coming out of our D-zone. We made strong plays. We had good wall plays that led to a couple of odd-man rushes. And then how we hung onto pucks and were patient offensively, which got us a power play, which got us the goal.”
The Avalanche were missing one of their top forwards in Valeri Nichushkin, but the Bruins were also missing one of their top defenders in Brandon Carlo. And the Avs had been on a roll regardless. They had won eight of 10 entering Thursday. They had scored three or more goals in nine straight games, and four or more in six of their last eight.
This was arguably the Bruins’ best win of the season, and it was their best players who rose to the occasion and led them to it.