During the first intermission Saturday, the theme song from the show “Happy Days” blasted over the TD Garden PA system. The Bruins led the Rangers 3-1 at that point. No one could have possibly guessed just how much happier of a day it would become for Boston.
By the end of the afternoon, everyone in attendance had seen things they had likely never seen before at a Bruins game, as Boston crushed New York, 10-2. Let’s just start with the list of feats to come out of this game:
-Pavel Zacha registered his first career hat trick.
-Marat Khusnutdinov also registered his first career hat trick, and tacked on a fourth goal.
-Zacha and Khusnutdinov became the sixth pair of Bruins teammates to record a hat trick in the same game, and the first since 1964, when Andy Hebenton and Dean Prentice did it.
-David Pastrnak tied a franchise record with six assists in the game, joining Bobby Orr in 1973 and Ken Hodge in 1971 as the only Bruins ever to do that.
-Pastrnak tied Orr for seventh on the Bruins’ career points list with 888.
-Pastrnak tied his career high in points with six, a mark he’s hit once before (on April 14, 2018, when he had three goals and three assists in a playoff game against Toronto).
-The Bruins scored 10 goals in a game for the first time since Oct. 16, 1988 against Chicago.
Bruins coach Marco Sturm may have had the most succinct summary of the game.
“We had a good day. They had a really bad day,” he said.
Nothing about this could have been predicted, though. This Bruins team has not been a juggernaut. They hadn’t even been playing particularly good hockey of late, entering Saturday with a 3-5-2 record in their previous 10 games. And, the Rangers actually scored first, just 1:24 into the game.
The Bruins answered just over a minute later, though, with Khusnutdinov blowing by Braden Schneider down the wing and beating Jonathan Quick blocker-side for his first of four goals. From that moment on, Sturm had a good feeling.
“I think as soon as Khusy scored that next shift after, I felt like, ‘I think we’re in this hockey game,’ and I felt really good about it,” Sturm said. “From then on, I just felt good about it.”
Zacha gave the Bruins the lead five minutes later on his first of three goals. His second goal came on the power play with 33 seconds left in the first, although it wasn’t immediately clear that he had scored. In fact, both the Rangers and a lot of fans had already left their seats for the intermission before replay revealed that Zacha had just poked a rebound over the line on a scramble that had been called no-goal in real-time.
Perhaps it was because of that semi-confusing situation that Bruins fans were a bit delayed in throwing their hats on the ice when Zacha scored again to make it 6-1 Boston midway through the second. That awkward reaction was the only thing that happened Saturday that Sturm could be critical of.
“You gotta work with the crowd. We need more hats on the ice,” Sturm said. “They probably left too early on that second goal.”
Fans got their redo early in the third period when Khusnutdinov capped off his hat trick, tipping in a Pastrnak shot from the point to make it 8-2.
Pastrnak set up Minten for his sixth assist of the game to make it 9-2. Minten, by the way, finished with two goals and an assist himself, coming up one goal short of what would have been the first triple hat trick in Bruins history. The Garden crowd began chanting, “We want 10,” which they got when Khusnutdinov tallied his fourth goal of the day on another tip-in.
It was all smiles in the Bruins locker room postgame.
“It’s awesome,” Khusnutdinov said. “Lucky day for me. Thank you, partners.”
“You don’t see that too often that two guys get a hat trick in the same game,” Zacha said. “So, I’m happy that it happened.”
“It was a fun afternoon,” Pastrnak said. “You don’t have games like this very often. So yeah, fun night and a great win.”
“It’s funny. Pav came in and I said, ‘Imagine getting a hat trick and being third star,’” Mark Kastelic pointed out.
Maybe that really sums up best just how crazy of a day it was. Zacha got his first career hat trick and was only the third star of the game. Khusnutdinov with his four goals and an assist took first star, and Pastrnak with his six assists was No. 2.
As was also made clear after the game, though, the Bruins don’t have long to celebrate Saturday’s historic win. They play again Sunday at 5 p.m., when they host the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team right ahead of them in the Eastern Conference wild card race.
“I think the guys should enjoy today,” Sturm said. “They played a hell of a hockey game. … They should feel really good about it, and I think they know it, too. We’ll address it again tomorrow, that it’s a zero-zero hockey game. We’ve got to push some buttons right away and make sure that we forget about today.”