For the first time since mid-October, the Lightning have been knocked off their perch, temporarily passing the Atlantic Division crown to the surging Bruins.
But the Bruins didn't just beat the Lightning by a 4-2 final and claim first place in the division.
For the third time in as many head-to-head meetings this season, they smacked the Lightning around for the better part of an hour, and let a raucous TD Garden know that they're not afraid of any team in this league. Especially not the juggernaut Lightning everybody was quick to award the East to back in October.
And honestly, why should they be?
Think about it: Everything 'cept the location was once again on the side of the Lightning. Entering Boston with an extra day of rest, having last played Monday at home while the Bruins played in Winnipeg on Tuesday -- and with health undoubtedly still on their side, even with the return of David Backes for the B's -- this was a potential statement game for Tampa. This was their chance to stop a slide, re-establish themselves as the premier team in the Atlantic, and say that the No. 1 spot in the conference was not for sale. Oh, and find some sort of momentum against a team that they have not held a lead of any sort against this season, and with losses in eight of the last 10 head-to-heads against in the Black and Gold.
They did that for the first three minutes of play, too, with four of the game's first five shots coming off Lightning sticks.
But much like they did when these teams last met, once the Bruins successfully weathered an early Lightning storm, they flipped the script.
In addition to firing the game's next 10 shots on goal, the Bruins put the Bolts through a grinder that held them without a shot on goal for 13 minutes. And it was in the final 58 seconds of the first that they were finally rewarded for their playoff-caliber efforts.
Eliminating time and space on Ryan McDonagh in the defensive zone, a Tommy Wingels-Tim Schaller combo forced the Bolts' star deadline pickup into a turnover, where a Wingels shot was capped with a signature Schaller net-front effort. And shifting to the power play just moments later, David Pastrnak's ping-pong goal off McDonagh's stick and through Vasilevskiy three seconds into the power-play opportunity gave the Bruins two goals in just 32 seconds and a 2-0 edge after the first period.
The Lightning countered with a power-play goal of their own in the middle frame, but when things got hot, it was Tuukka Rask that showed serious fire and brought the Garden to life with some punches to the mug of Tampa Bay forward Cory Conacher.
"It's not something you want every night because I don't – it doesn't happen every night, for obvious reasons, but yeah you want to see some fire, some urgency," Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy said of Rask's scrap. "He's defending his territory without being reckless. He just did what he had to do in that situation, calmed down and played."
"In the first period someone fell on my knee there, there was no penalty called – there was a penalty called actually – and that one it felt like to me that I don't think our own D's were jumping on me, I felt like they were pushing or something so I just had to let them know I was there because it happened twice," Rask, assessed two roughing minors, said. "The last thing you want to do is get hurt in some stupid play like that."
Part in defense of his teammate, part in defense of his crease, it was confirmation that the Bruins were not going to let the Bolts dictate anything in their building.
It was something that the Bruins were able to match for the rest of the game, too.
When Dan Girardi nailed Patrice Bergeron upstairs in the third period, Pastrnak came right over and challenged Girardi to a scrap. Girardi accepted, nullifying what looked to be the start of a great Tampa chance, and Pastrnak did his best to hang in there.
"It's our team right there in a nutshell," Cassidy said. "We stick together, and I think we've done that all year, no matter who is in the lineup. We trust our players to go out and do the job and have each other's backs. That's what makes it a special group."
And after a stellar save on Nikita Kucherov by Rask during some four-on-four play, the B's stormed down into the T.B. zone, and let Brad Marchand, Torey Krug, and Bergeron cycle the puck around like magicians before No. 37 pushed the lead back to two.
Victor Hedman responded and brought the Bolts back within one, but from there the Bruins simply burrowed themselves under the skin of Tampa's top talents, culminating with a Marchand empty-netter and readable "It's over" celebrations coming from No. 63.
But this game came with a cherry on top for those of us saying that the Bruins are in Tampa Bay's head. With the game all but over, Kucherov and Steven Stamkos found it to be score-settling time with a Boston fourth line that downright bullied them in their head-to-head, with Noel Acciari and Schaller finding a way to make the Lightning's two top talents become completely unhinged. With Acciari and Schaller smiling all the while, this was some good old fashioned old-school psychological warfare.
"I just know that when they go over the boards, those players have to feel that they're going to have to earn their ice, and they're going to get played hard and clean," Cassidy said of the Acciari line playing the Tampa one-two punch with some snarl. "That's just the way it is, so it worked out well for us to be able to keep them in check tonight."
"We can battle just like any team," Marchand said of the heated affair with the Bolts. "Every team is going to battle hard right now, every team is fighting for position or playoff spots so every game has a playoff feel and we're prepared for that."
From the top of the East -- and undoubtedly in the heads of the Lightning, for that matter.
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