The final game of an outstanding NHL regular season still had some aplomb.
At 7 pm EST, the Atlantic Division stood at:
W L OTL PTS
Florida 58 17 7 122
Tranna 53 21 7 113
T Bay 50 23 8 108
Bruins 51 25 5 107
For tonight’s Leafs/Bruins contest, Boston only needed one point to move up, depending on the outcome of the Islander/Tampa contest. Not surprisingly, the Leafs sat out big guns Mathews, Marner and Tavares, while starting Kallegren in goal. Somewhat surprisingly, the Bruins sat out McCovoy, Bergeron, Patsernak and Hall. On the other hand, the Lightning went with a full roster. Hmmmmm ?!
Boston got on the board first after only 1:10 with a goal from Fredricks. As the non full house was soon to discover, this was pretty much like a pre-season scrimmage for both clubs. This proved beneficial for some of the lesser lights on the Leafs roster. The Spezza/Clifford/Simmonds line as well as Krampf/Engval/Nylander combo got all kinds of ice and that eventually led to a nice snipe off a breakaway goal from Nylander (his 33rd) later in the period. Ilya Mikaev got his 21st off a deflection from Giordano and then Nick Abbruzzo got his first ever NHL goal off another deflection – this time from Mo Reilly. On the scene reporter AEH claims to have seen more Justin Bieber (yellow) jerseys than she cares to remember.
The second period was rather pedestrian although high spirited with some solid hits from both sides. On the ground reporter AEH observed from the first row greens that Jake Muzzin was a solid performer and rounding into form nicely. When Nosek pile drove Liligren into the backboards late in period, Morgan Reilly was the first one in there to correct that poor decision. 3-1 after two.
This one was pretty much a howdy-do laffer and even dedicated reporter AEH was seen leaving for the social bar before it was over. Nylander snuck in a beer hockey slider for his 80th point before Jake DeBrusk made it a 5-2 final.
HOPPER NOTES: Loved how Coach Keefe worked all 7 d-men into the line-up under various combinations – HOH particularly liked the Giardano/Lyubushkin combo…GM Kyle Dubas has done a nice job in shoring up that D group…Jeff O’Neil thought (pre-game) that Nylander would be pissed that he didn’t get to “sit” with rest of the big boys…he ended up with 2 goals and his 80th point…however, he might have got his hat trick had Engvall chose to pass off to wee Willy instead of scoring the final empty netter on his own…I’ll be interested to see if the hi-lite shows will show the clip of Nylander looking toward Engvall during the cele…tonight’s starless line-up was good for players like Joey Anderson (couple of good chances in the first), Blackwell and Abraduzze to show Coach Keefe they are there when needed…back to Nylander, I had lunch today with an old pal who used to wait outside the Gardens with me to get the cheapest scalper tix – they wondered (as do I) if Nylander is a popular teammate ?
Cheers – comments welcome and thanks for the contribution from reporter AEH !