“I think I just misread it,’’ said Rask, who made 24 saves. “I went to play it with my forehand. To me, it seemed like it came faster out of the boards than before it hit the boards. Just tough when your goalie makes a mistake like that. It shows on the scoreboard. Today, it cost us a game. Not much you can do.’’
The moral victory in last night’s gut punch of a loss — Montreal extended its lead over Boston to four points in the Eastern Conference playoff chase — was that instead of tucking their tails, the Bruins stepped on the gas after Rask’s gaffe. Milan Lucic trimmed Montreal’s lead with his seventh goal of the season at 11:46 of the third.
In the last five minutes of regulation, the Bruins had a chance to tie the score when Marco Sturm played give-and-go with Mark Recchi. The sequence led to a two-on-zero rush that ended with Sturm taking a cross-crease dish from Recchi for a point-blank scoring chance. But Jaroslav Halak (21 saves) read Recchi’s pass, exploded to his left, and got in front of Sturm’s shot to keep Montreal’s one-goal lead intact.
“We had an opportunity to tie it,’’ coach Claude Julien said. “Their goaltender made a great save on that. I thought our team got better as the game went on.’’
The Bruins’ legs and heads were invisible at the start. In the first 30 seconds, a Zdeno Chara turnover led to Benoit Pouliot humming a slap shot that rang off the right post. Then after Mark Stuart was sent off for holding, Andrei Markov wristed a shot from the point that skimmed off Dennis Seidenberg and floated over Rask at 6:02 for the game’s first goal.
A bad start turned even worse when Kostitsyn gave his club a two-goal lead in the final minute of the first. Markov jumped up in the offensive zone and started to wheel around the net with the puck. Before completing his wraparound, Markov sent a pass across his body to Kostitsyn. With Rask anticipating the maneuver and hugging the far post, Kostitsyn rapped the puck into the open net at 19:20.
In contrast, the Bruins put only six shots on Halak in the first.
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