OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) Sean Kuraly picked a great time to score his first two NHL goals.
Kuraly’s second goal of the game at 10:19 of the second overtime gave the Boston Bruins a 3-2 win over the Ottawa Senators in Game 5 on Friday night, avoiding elimination in the first-round series.
Charlie McAvoy’s shot from the right point was tipped by David Backes and then hit Senators defenseman Erik Karlsson‘s skate in front of goalie Craig Anderson, and Kuraly backhanded it in.
“I was just at the tail end of (my shift) and the puck lands on my stick and then (I put) it into the back of the net,” Kuraly said. “Those are the good ones, you don’t get many of those, but hey it bounced on my stick and I’m happy that it did.”
David Pastrnak also scored and Tuukka Rask finished with 41 saves to help the Bruins rally from a 2-0 deficit early in the second period and cut the Senators’ lead to 3-2 in the best-of-seven series.
Game 6 is Sunday in Boston.
Boston nearly won it at 14:25 of the first overtime, but Noel Acciari‘s apparent goal was waved off due to goalie interference when Kuraly tripped over Anderson. The Bruins challenged the call to no avail.
“We were just battling out there,” Boston captain Zdeno Chara said. “We were close and a few denied goals, but that’s just part of it and you have to battle through it and keep going and that’s what we did.”
Mark Stone and Jean-Gabriel Pageau scored for the Senators, and Craig Anderson stopped 36 shots.
Ottawa had two great chances to take the lead in the third as the Bruins took a delay of game and a too many men penalty in the final 6 minutes of the period, but Ottawa managed just two shots on goal.
“We expected a hard-fought, long, grinding, grueling series and that’s what we’ve got,” Ottawa’s Dion Phaneuf said. “I don’t know how to explain it any better than they’re pushing, we’re pushing and it goes to double overtime and anything can happen. It’s disappointing, but we’ve got to move on the same way that we moved on from the other couple that we won in overtime.”
Before Acciari’s near-goal, the Bruins went on the power play on Clarke MacArthur‘s high-sticking penalty, but couldn’t get anything past Anderson.
“We knew it wasn’t going to come easy, it hasn’t come easy for us,” Backes said, “and we were going to have to stay with it and stay with it and Tuukka made some huge saves and in the end we were able to tilt the scales in our favor, get that opportunity, make good on it and this is a tight series.”
Ottawa was 0 for 5 with the man advantage, while the Bruins were 0 for 3.
Trailing 2-0, Brad Marchand helped cut the lead in half when he took the puck behind the Senators net and made a cross-crease pass to Pastrnak, who beat Anderson short side at 8:40 of the second.
Kuraly tied it with his first-ever NHL goal on a bank shot from the side of the net with 2:55 left in the middle period.
“You get the playoffs and there’s no lead that’s big enough to say that you’re going to get away with it,” Ottawa coach Guy Boucher said. “It’s not because we started playing differently, they just scored. We didn’t do anything different.
“It’s one of those games that could go either way and it didn’t go our way.”
Ottawa scored just 30 seconds into the period to push their lead to 2-0 when the Bruins defense was caught flat-footed. Pageau was able to break in alone and beat Rask through the legs.
The Senators took a 1-0 lead in the first period when Mike Hoffman made a great pass to Stone, who slipped behind the Bruins defense and beat Rask on the backhand.
An already depleted Bruins lineup took another hit as David Krejci left the game late in the first after a collision with Chris Wideman. The Senators lost Viktor Stalberg in the first overtime and he is considered day-to-day.
NOTES: C Chris Kelly was in the Senators lineup for first time, replacing the injured Tom Pyatt. … Ottawa D Mark Borowiecki (lower body, day-to-day). RW Chris Neil, C Tommy Wingels were healthy scratches. … The Bruins remained without defensemen Adam McQuaid (upper body), Torey Krug (lower body) and Brandon Carlo (upper body). C Ryan Spooner was scratched as he wasn’t 100 percent.
Photo credit – Jana Chytilova / Freestyle Photo – Getty Images / Ottawa, ON
