B’s Dominate Wings, Take Game 3
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
It's a good thing Boston sports fans have the Bruins to distract them. Otherwise they would have to focus on the disappointing start the Red Sox are off to.
Tuesday night at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, the B's brought their "A" game and dominated the Red WIngs on their way to a 3-0 shut out to take a 2-1 lead in their best-of-seven Eastern Conference Quarterfinal round series.
Boston looked very much like the team that rolled over the competition during the regular season on their way to the best record in the league. The Bruins controlled the game from the outset scoring twice in the first period.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTDefenseman Dougie Hamilton took the puck coast-to-coast on the power play and burried an absolute sniper shot above Jimmy Howard's left shoulder into the top right corner of the net for a 1-0 lead 9 minutes in. About 7 minutes later, Jordan Caron came racing off the Boston bench and caught the sleeping Red Wings in a line-change. He reaced toward the Detroit goal and stuffed one past Howard to put Boston up 2-zip.
Patrice Bergeron's empty-netter with 2 minutes to play accounted for Boston's final goal and Tuuka Rask, while not challenged greatly, stopped all 23 shots he faced.
Rask did make a spectacular sliding glove save off of Justin Abdelkader early in the third that, had it gone in, surely would have energized the Red Wings and their otherwise lifeless fans.
How dominant were the B's Tuesday night? Enough so that Red Wings coach Mike Babcock refused to address his team after the game, instead choosing to wait until practice today to do so.
The B's and Wings meet again tomorrow night in Detroit for game 4 of their series. Face-off is slated for just after 8pm.
The winner of this series will meet the Montreal Canadiens in the next round of the playoffs. The Habs swept Tampa Bay 4 games to none in their opening round series to become the first team to advance to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
