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Game 3: Boston Bruins Vs Washington Capitals Lines, Preview

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Boston Bruins vs Washington Capitals

Thanks to the Boston Bruins veteran leadership core and some heroics from newcomer Taylor Hall, the Bruins will hit the ice for Game 3 (6:30 PM ET, NESN, NBCSN, TVAS, SN360, SNE, SNO) against the Washington Capitals tonight at TD Garden in Boston with their series tied at one game apiece.

“That’s something about our team,” Boston Bruins alternate captain Brad Marchand said after scoring the overtime winner 39 seconds into the extra frame of Game 2 Monday. “We don’t panic throughout games. We have so much character in our room and you can sense it all the way through the bench, and during the timeouts, and in the room. A sense of calm when things aren’t going our way. That’s why we have ‘Tuuks’ (Tuukka Rask) back there to kind of bail us out in certain situations like that. It gives us a minute to find our game. At this time of year, it’s about competing and that’s what we did (Monday night). We found our game, especially against a tough team.”

The Boston Bruins will once again turn to Rask in Game 3 after the 2020 Vezina Trophy finalist made 36 saves to help his team get to overtime in Game 2 and is 1-1 with a 2.87 GAA and a .915 save percentage so far.

Bruins Notes

-Through two playoff games, Boston Bruins winger Jake DeBrusk has thankfully reverted to the playoff Jake DeBrusk and not the regular season DeBrusk of the last two seasons. DeBrusk has scored in each of the first two games of the series and now has 16 goals and nine assists in 51 playoff games. After being a healthy scratch more than once down the final stretch of the regular season, DeBrusk has found his game when his team needs him most.

“I think there’s always a couple of times during the year when there is reset opportunities,” Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy said Tuesday over Zoom. “For Jake, he very well could have said to himself it doesn’t matter now (how the regular season went), it’s whatever happens in the playoffs. That was the message to some of the guys who maybe weren’t happy with their regular seasons, I know Jake falls into that category: Help the team win. That might be a number of different ways. For him, he has the ability to be a wild card in terms of scoring goals for us.

He has done it in the playoffs, he has done it in the regular season, he’s doing it now. So, good for Jake. And they’re not lucky, he’s gone to the front of the net, he shot the puck, so they weren’t just fluky goals, they were well-earned. He’s invested, that’s what we need, good for Jake.”

–Defenseman Jeremy Lauzon (right hand) will miss another game after blocking a shot in Game 1. John Moore is out for the season after undergoing hip surgery.

–The Bruins’ powerplay went 0-for-1 in Game 2 and is now 1-for-6 in the series with a 16.7% success rate.

-After finishing second overall with an 86 % success rate, killing off 153 of 178 powerplay attempts against them, and also posting a league-best nine shorthanded goals this season, the Bruins’ penalty kill is off to a solid start in the playoffs. The Bruins PK held the Caps to one goal on four powerplay attempts in Game 2 and has killed off four of the five powerplay attempts they’ve faced.

Washington Capitals Notes

-The Capitals enter Game 3 with some big health question marks. Forwards T.J. Oshie, Lars Eller, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and Connor McMichael, as well as goalie Ilya Samsonov are all game-time decisions for the Caps. Goalie Vitek Vanecek has been ruled out.

 

-The Capitals powerplay is 1-for-5 with a 20% success rate.

-The Capitals penalty kill has killed off five of the Bruins’ six powerplays.

 

Boston Bruins

Forwards:

Brad Marchand – Patrice Bergeron – David Pastrnak

Taylor Hall – David Krejci – Craig Smith

Nick Ritchie – Charlie Coyle – Jake DeBrusk

Sean Kuraly – Curtis Lazar – Chris Wagner

Defense:

Matt Grzelcyk – Charlie McAvoy

Mike Reilly – Brandon Carlo

Connor Clifton – Kevan Miller

Goalies:

Tuukka Rask

Jeremy Swayman

Washington Capitals

Forwards

Alexander Ovechkin – Nicklas Backstrom – Anthony Mantha

Conor Sheary – Lars Eller – Michael Raffl

Daniel Sprong – TJ Oshie – Tom Wilson

Carl Hagelin – Nic Dowd – Garnet Hathaway

Defenseman

Dmitri Orlov – John Carlson

Brendan Dillon – Nick Schultz

Zdeno Chara – Nick Jensen

Goaltenders

Craig Anderson

Phoenix Copley

*Note: This Capitals lineup is very much up in the air and we will update closer to faceoff.

 

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