GOLD STAR: Roman Josi scored the first two goals for the Predators on the power play, had seven generated shot attempts, a hit and three blocked shots in 22:05 of ice time for a Nashville team full of D-men dangerous on the PP. Josi also registered his first NHL fight with Brad Marchand after the two of them starting mixing it up in the corner, and that turned into a couple of shots and some angry hugging before the refs pulled them apart. Bottom line: Josi was the best player on the ice for the Predators, and powered an offense that’s struggled at times to put goals up on the board.
BLACK EYE: Brad Marchand has been very good lately, but had a tough night on Monday night with no shots on net and a pair of minor penalties that sapped some of the energy away from the Bruins players. Marchand did take Roman Josi off the ice for five minutes when the two of them dropped the gloves in the corner, and that was a good trade-off considering how well the Nashville defenseman was playing in this game. But as much of a factor as Marchand had been in the previous couple of games, he was not a factor at all in the loss to the Predators. He was among a number of Bruins that looked fatigued after a long trip out West to play Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver and finish out with four games in six nights including the travel back from the West Coast.
TURNING POINT: The Bruins went the entire second period without an even strength shot on net, and managed only four shots over the 20 minute period despite scoring the Loui Eriksson power play goal to keep it a 2-2 game. But they also took three minor penalties that helped sap some of the energy from their skating legs, and could only must 10 total shots on net in the final 40 minutes of the game while the rested Predators fired 21 shots at Jonas Gustavsson. The final play with Viktor Arvidsson motoring around a falling Kevan Miller in the third period was the perfect example of two teams coming into that game with very different energy levels given the circumstances.
BY THE NUMBERS: 575 – the number of points for Patrice Bergeron after his secondary assist on the Loui Eriksson goal, which tied him for 11th all-time with Milt Schmidt on the Bruins scoring list.
QUOTE TO NOTE: “I think to overcome that stuff, you’ve got to be smarter. I think we took a lot of penalties that just kind of gave them momentum, and then overtaxed a lot of our players. I think we needed to be smarter in that area.” – Claude Julien, on how the lack of discipline hurt a team that didn’t have the extra energy to fight through the penalty kills.