After twenty minutes of play, the Flyers trail the Bruins 2-1. David Krejci put the Bruins up early on a broken play in front of Brian Boucher, but Danny Briere tied the score at one midway through the first period on a very similar play.
With only 36 seconds left, however, Ville Leino allowed Nathan Horton to drive down the slot and put a rebound past Brian Boucher, giving the Bruins the lead after one period. All three goals were scored with Leino and Briere on the ice, which… matches up with what we saw in the first series.
Throughout the period, the referees were once again questionable. Zac Rinaldo was called for goalie interference, but he was penalized more for who he is than what he did. At the other end, Daniel Paille lifted Chris Pronger’s stick to negate an icing, but was called for tripping. In all, the officiating has been worse – and both calls were made under the “protect the players” umbrella, but it wasn’t a good start for the men in stripes.
As alluded to earlier, both Bruins goals were scored by their top line. The Briere line was on the ice for both of them. On home ice, that is simply unacceptable. Peter Laviolette needs to be smarter and better at putting his players in a position to succeed, and putting his weakest defensive line on the ice against the Bruins’ best offensive line – and also their two tallest forwards – is not doing his job. It hasn’t been a good post-season for Laviolette, and he needs to fix it.
Still 40 minutes to play.