Savard the Hero as the Bruins Beat Philly 5-4 in Overtime

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Sunday, May 02, 2010

By: Scott Cordischi

If you were wondering what type of impact, if any, Marc Savard would have upon his return to the Bruins line-up for this series, you got your answer Saturday afternoon.

Savard’s slapshot from the right wing 13:52 into overtime lifted Boston to a 5-4 win over Philadelphia and a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinals.

Normally in a game where 9 goals are scored you would assume that the goaltending on both sides would be average at best. You would have been wrong to make that assumption. Both Brian Boucher and Tuukka Rask gave up soft goals during the course of the game, but they also made incredible saves to keep their teams in it.

Boucher stopped 41 Bruin shots and withstood a furious attack by the B’s in the opening minutes of the overtime period. Rask, himself, came up big in overtime stopping Scott Hartnell’s game-winning bid 2:30 into OT and he also denied Dan Carcillo’s breakaway bid at 4:27 of overtime. All-in-all, Rask stopped 32 of the 36 shots he faced on the day.

The Bruins never trailed in the game jumping out to a 2-0 first period lead on goals by Steve Begin and Patrice Bergeron. Ryan Parent put the Flyers on the board in the second period to cut the deficit to 2-1 before Miroslav Satan’s power play goal put Boston back up by 2. Chris Pronger closed out the scoring in the second period to make a 3-2 game before Boston’s David Krejci made is 4-2 7:25 into the third period. Mike Richards scored on the power play for Philadelphia at 12:37 of the third to make it 4-3 Boston and the Flyers would tie it up at 4-4 on Danny Briere’s goal with less that 3:30 to play in regulation.

That set up Savard’s overtime heroics. Having missed the last 18 games of the regular season and the six games against Buffalo in the opening round of the playoffs due to a concussion, no one knew quite what to expect from Savard. His ice time was limited to 15:16 for the game but he finish as a +1 in the plus/minus ratio. And that +1 lifted his Bruins to 4-0 at home this postseason and to a 1-0 lead in the Eastern Conference semi’s with game 2 slated for 7pm tomorrow night at the Garden.