BOSTON – All Jimmy Hayes was looking for was one measly little break to get him going again offensively.
The 6-foot-6 right winger got that and then some while collecting his first career NHL hat trick in Boston’s explosive 7-3 win over the Ottawa Senators at TD Garden on Tuesday night. The command performance obliterated a futile stretch of Hayes scoring just one goal in his previous 21 games, and just three points in 11 games during a slow month of December.
“It’s just nice to see Jimmy [Hayes] produce, and get a bit of a break there. He hasn’t had much luck in the production area, for a while so you know he played on a line tonight that I thought played really well together, those three guys, and he was in the right place,” said Claude Julien of Hayes, who was on the fourth line with Max Talbot and Zac Rinaldo after the lines were shuffled based on Seth Griffith’s arrival from Providence. “We talked about him scoring some goals with his size and his strength, tight around the net and that’s what he did tonight. So hopefully he sees that, builds on that and continues to produce for us.”
The first goal of the game let Hayes know it was going to be his kind of night with some much needed offensive flourish while other Bruins players are down and out with injuries. It all started with Kevan Miller attempting to rim a puck around the boards deep behind the Ottawa net, but instead it took a crazy bounce off the end boards right to Hayes at the front of the net.
Hayes buried the gift past a surprised Craig Anderson in the first period, and the Bruins offense was off and running even without their most productive offensive players in Krejci.
“When you get a bounce like that, it gets a nice little smile on your face . . . you’re feeling good about yourself,” said Hayes. “It’s a part of the process, you’ve got to find ways when you’re slumping to score goals. That’s what you like to do. You’re coming off a big year from the year before, you just got to find your groove and get back to the game your good at doing – being around the net, going hard to the net and get rewarded.”
The final two goals were Max Talbot and Hayes working a little magic together on the newly configured energy line. Talbot served up a nifty little saucer pass on a 2-on-1 that Hayes went top corner with in the third period for an important insurance score that essentially iced the game, and then Hayes finished off the hat trick with just 0.2 seconds left on the clock. This time it was a rebound score of a Talbot shot as the Bruins players furiously worked to try and get the Dorchester native his hat trick in front of the home crowd.
In some ways Talbot seemed even more excited than Hayes did when the last two goals of the hat trick popped up in the final five minutes of the game.
“I was jacked. I feel bad now because I celebrated too hard at the end, but we called it at the face-off,” said Talbot, who collected his first two assists of the season on the last two Hayes goals. “I was definitely looking for him, so I was glad that he got the hat-trick. You usually don’t celebrate that hard at the end of a game like this, but I was feeling emotional in that situation.”
Now the definitively streaky Hayes will look to extend this bountiful offensive stretch for as long as it will last while going hard to the net, and performing all the tasks of the power forward game at the heart of unlocking the 26-year-old’s offense.