Bruins top line embarrasses Maple Leafs in Game 2 beat-down

The Boston Bruins put seven on the Toronto Maple Leafs tonight in a big win in Beantown. The Leafs are left looking for answers as the series heads to Toronto.

The cardinal sin in every cooking show is overcooking pasta. This almost always leads to a chef being dismissed from the cooking competition. Tonight in Boston, “Pasta” was cooking, and he was perfect.

David Pastrnak scored three goals and added three assists for good measure, as he and the Bruins top line had their way with the Toronto Maple Leafs. The B’s number one line had a combined total of 14 points on the evening.

Pastrnak, who is playing better than he ever has at the perfect time, showed off some beautiful stick work on each of his three goals:

https://twitter.com/NHLBruins/status/985362075261263872

Pastrnak is the youngest player in NHL history to record six points in a playoff game, edging out fellow great Wayne Gretzky.

Meanwhile, Leafs are falling in spring instead of autumn this year. Toronto started the game well. For the first five minutes, they kept the Bruins in their own end and were looking solid. This did not last long. The Bruins came out of hibernation to score four unanswered in the first period. Goals by Pastrnak, DeBrusk, Miller and Nash put this game out of reach for the young Leafs.

The Leafs responded in the second, with a goal by Zach Hymen to put them on the board. This was quickly matched by David Krejci before Tyler Bozak ended the scoring in the period to make it 5-2 Boston. Pastrnak would add two goals in the third with James Van Riemsdyk adding one in between for a final score of 7-3 for the Bruins.

An interesting and ongoing storyline about the linesman of this series has developed. For no apparent reason, linesmen are holding the puck longer than usual during face-offs. This has been frustrating for both teams, as players are being kicked out of the circle after being taunted by the linemen for several seconds with no puck drop. This has been both strange and annoying and both teams will be hoping the stripes smarten up in games three and four.

A scary moment for the Leafs came in the second period, when Leo Komarov collided with Miller and left the game with what looked like a knee injury. The severity of the injury is still unknown and the Leafs will be hopeful to have Komarov back in the line up on Monday.

In order to make this a series, the Maple Leafs are going to have to somehow figure out how to stop the Bruins top line. This daunting and seemingly impossible task will be difficult, as no team this season seems to have an answer for a healthy Marchand-Bergeron-Pastrnak line. The B’s top line has 20 points in the first two games of this series. Read that last sentence again. Ridiculous.

The Leafs would love to have the grit and scoring ability of Nazem Kadri right now, who spent tonight serving the first of this three game suspension for a hit on Tommy Wingels in game one. If the Leafs don’t figure out a way to slow the Bruins down, he won’t see another game this season.

Twitter was abuzz during game two of the series, with many thinking that the Leafs are already done:

Game 3 comes on Monday night in Toronto. The home crowd will be loud and slightly pissed-off that they haven’t gotten more out of their team thus far. If the Leafs can’t pull out a win on Monday, this series is as good as over.

If you are a Bruins fan, you are hardly surprised by the outcome of Games 1 and 2. While the score may be higher than imagined, the Bruins are finally healthy. This team was dangerous all year with a very injured line-up. Now that the team is healthy, they are hitting an entirely new level of play at the exact right time. It is very exciting to be a Bruins fan right now.

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The Boston Bruins will look to keep rolling on Monday night in Toronto. At this point, it’s hard to imagine them slowing down. Game 3 will likely be closer than the first two, but the Leafs will need a drastic change (or an entirely new group of defenseman) to match Boston’s firepower.

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