DETROIT — We’ll soon find out if the Bruins took the Red Wings’ best punch last night at Joe Louis Arena. But no matter what the Wings have left, the B’s shook off a pretty good haymaker and came away with a 3-2 overtime victory.
After they erased a 2-0 deficit, Jarome Iginla tipped Dougie Hamilton’s shot, which deflected off defenseman Danny DeKeyser’s leg past Jonas Gustavsson with 6:28 remaining in the OT to give the B’s a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference first-round series.
“We talked about it in intermission — just get pucks on net,” said Hamilton. “We’ve seen overtime goals with bad bounces and stuff like, and that’s what happened.”
The Bruins earned their luck. They were the better team in OT, outshooting the Wings 12-3, though one of those shots on Tuukka Rask (35 saves) was a Justin Abdelkader breakaway in the first minute of the extra session. Rask also stopped 13-of-14 shots during the first period to keep the B’s in it.
“We weathered the storm in the first period,” Rask said. “They had a step on us early in the game, but I think we got better as the game went on and got rewarded.”
The Wings got an emotional lift as captain Henrik Zetterberg returned to the lineup for the first time since Feb. 8 after back surgery. And in a counterpunch move by coach Mike Babcock, big Todd Bertuzzi was inserted into the lineup to help solve Detroit’s dilemma of not getting to the net. Goalie Jimmy Howard was a late scratch with the flu, but Gustavsson played very well in his first playoff game.
The Wings flew all over the ice in the opening 20 minutes, outshooting the B’s 14-5 and taking a 1-0 lead on their first power-play goal of the series. Pavel Datsyuk beat David Krejci on a faceoff — Krejci said he won the draw but it went off an official’s skate — back to Niklas Kronwall, who used a Bertuzzi screen to beat Rask.
That’s all they would get by Rask in the first, and then the Bruins pushed back in the second.
“We just wanted to get back to our game,” said Hamilton. “In the first period, we let them take it to us a little bit and they had kind of the start that you’d expect them to have. Tuukka had to make some huge saves and then I guess we just relaxed and played our game.”
The B’s were better from the opening puck drop in the second, though Datsyuk would put them in an even deeper hole with his second goal of the series at 4:27.
However, the B’s got on their course and wouldn’t let that goal knock them off it. Torey Krug cut the lead in half when he scored on a deflected shot on an abbreviated power play at 10:14.
Then Milan Lucic, the chief object of the Detroit fans’ animosity these two games, tied it just 1:15 into the third period. On a line change, Carl Soderberg took the puck in deep while Lucic drove the middle of the ice to the net. Soderberg kicked it out front and Lucic buried it under Gustavsson.
Brad Marchand had a glorious chance to put the B’s ahead midway through the third when Krug set him up for an open net, but he somehow missed it.
In overtime, after Rask kept them alive with the stop on Abdelkader, the B’s peppered Gustavsson until winning it on a pinball shot he had no chance of stopping.
The Bruins now have a chance to end the series at the Garden tomorrow. And after needing a miracle comeback in Game 7 last year after blowing a 3-1 series lead against Toronto, they’ll surely want to take care of business.
“Tonight was our toughest one of the series, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be,” said Iginla. “Each game gets a little tougher as the series goes on, and being up now we want to close it out. We don’t doubt they’ll come out really hard the next game, but it felt good to win a hard game, one where everything didn’t go our way and they were good.”
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