BOSTON -- There was little doubt Patrice Bergeron was going to insert himself into Saturdays win against the Philadelphia Flyers.
The two-way center finished Bostons 3-2 shootout win over the Flyers with 21:02 of ice time, and was involved in nearly every game-winning play. He was winning one-on-one battles in all three zones and won 12-out-of-17 face-offs to keep the puck on his teams stick, and he created the teams second goal when he fed Tyler Seguin cutting toward the net.
Claude Julien was attempting to recognize the entire team for their group effort following the victory, but he couldnt help but credit Bergeron after the center managed four shots and a pair of blocked shots.
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Its not fair to point out just one guy because Bergeron sticks out a little more because of what he brings to the team, and I think everybody did a pretty good job. But Bergie is one of those guys that, Ive said that numerous times, you can never say enough about the player, said Julien. You can never say enough about the person because hes great at both ends. Hes a real good team player, good person. You never see a negative thing come out of his mouth, and if he gets mad, hes mad at himself."
He demands a lot, and he expects a lot out of himself. I dont know that theres that may players that take as good of care of themselves off the ice as he does. He really cares about his job, and he wants to be the best every day. He comes to practice, and he wants to be the best guy on the ice on practice day; he wants to be the hardest-working guy, and those guys end up getting rewarded for that. Those guys stick out in times of need. You see them bring their A game to the table, and theyre always one of the best players on the ice.
But the true capper came in the shootout when Bergeron followed successful scoring shots from David Krejci and Tyler Seguin, and won the game for Boston with another successful shot over Ilya Bryzgalovs glove hand. The fact that hes done it all while playing through significant pain in his left knee made it all the more impressive.
Bergeron actually came up with the game-winning shootout attempt while firing stick-side after both Krejci and Seguin had luck going glove-side high on the Flyers goaltender in the shootout.
I asked David Krejci before and he said the blocker side wasnt open, but still when I went in I thought it was open. I was actually thinking about glove side when I was going in at first for the first couple of strides because they told me it was glove-side open, said Bergeron. But when I got in I thought he cheated more to his glove sidemaybe because he got beat there twice. I felt like the hole was on the blocker side so I went with it.
The Bruins coach is always fond of stating that his teams best players have to be at their best in the biggest games: Bergeron was that and then some as the Bruins finally broke free of their season-worst four-game losing funk.