GOLD STAR: Charlie McAvoy continues an upward trend in his play coming out of the extended break in January. McAvoy assisted on each of the first two goals for Boston, made a really smart, strong play on the first one walking the blue line before entering the zone and then eventually firing a point bomb on the net that created a rebound scoring chance for Charlie Coyle.
McAvoy led the team in ice time and also tackled Jay Beagle in the third period after the Canucks forward tried to throw a dirty hit on Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask in just his second game back from a concussion. McAvoy finished with two assists, a plus-2 rating, had four shot attempts and two blocked shots in 20:42 of ice time for the Black and Gold.
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BLACK EYE: Weak sauce by Jay Beagle in a 3-0 game in the third period taking a quick little elbow at the head of Tuukka Rask after incidental contact with the Bruins goaltender at the net. Charlie McAvoy immediately tackled Beagle and essentially hog-tied him until the referees could get in between the two players. Beagle was then jettisoned from the game with a 10-minute misconduct along with a goalie interference call as a result of the play.
Beyond that Beagle didn't do much of anything with no shots and no hits in 9:42 of ice time, so it was a pretty weak sauce move to then decide he was going to cheap shot a goalie in a game that his Canucks teammates never really showed up in at all.
TURNING POINT: The Bruins fumbled away a 5-on-3 chance in the second period and were still clinging to just a one-goal lead more than halfway through the second period, and there was definitely some doubt as to whether it was going to bite them while allowing the Canucks to hang around in the game. But the Bruins pepped up again later in the second period, still outshot the Canucks 17-9 in the period overall and finally got their insurance goal on a nice transition play where Brad Marchand eventually buried one into an open net after a nice feed from Patrice Bergeron.
Once the Bruins were up 2-0, they exerted their control over the game and Vancouver never really had another serious comeback chance from that point forward.
HONORABLE MENTION: Charlie Coyle has been on a bit of an offensive streak lately with three goals and nine points in his last 11 games, and had one of his more productive efforts on Tuesday night with a goal and two points in the win. Coyle scored the first goal of the game when he crashed down the slot for the rebound, and then went backhand to fore-hand past Jakob Markstrom to cash in on the Charlie McAvoy carom.
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Then Coyle added an assist later and finished with a competitive three shot attempts, two hits, one takeaway, one blocked shot and 7-of-14 face-off wins in 17:10 of ice time while centering Anders Bjork and Sean Kuraly. It's an important piece for the Bruins to begin getting dominant third line play out of Coyle and his line, and they have getting it as of late.
BY THE NUMBERS: 13-for-13 – the Bruins penalty kill over the first three games back from the NHL All-Star/bye week break as Boston's special teams has been dominant for them after pretty much the entire team went on January vacation.
QUOTE TO NOTE: "There's been a stretch of 5 or 6 games now where we're taking a little more value in that [defensive] part of the game. Some of it is getting the balance in the lines so that they are fresh, and getting everybody involved. It helps everybody stay in the game." –Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy, on a recent stretch where the Bruins have put together four wins in a row and played pretty consistently for the last six games.
