Marchand breaks late tie, Bruins top Senators 2-1 in Game 1

As expected, the Boston Bruins will begin the 2017 Stanley Cup playoffs without two of their top defensemen, while rookie blueliner Charlie McAvoy will make his National Hockey League debut against the Ottawa Senators Wednesday night at Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa. Eventually, the Bruins got the bounce they needed when Bergeron’s shot was blocked in front but the carom went straight to Marchand, who wasn’t going to miss a wide-open net from here.

“I don’t think we’ve been outplayed by them”, Miller said. The team will be missing one key player for this series in defenseman Torey Krug, who had eight goals and 43 assists in more than 21 minutes per night.

The Senators will look to even the series Saturday afternoon at Canadian Tire Centre.

Tanner Glass scored in the first period and Henrik Lundqvist made 31 saves to help the New York Rangers beat the Montreal Canadiens 2-0 on Wednesday night in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series. The United States doesn’t win the World Juniors and Boston University doesn’t make it out of the first round of the NCAA tournament without him. “Anytime you’re not able to play in the games it’s frustrating”. I know he can wrist the puck, but now it’s a question of can he, under pressure, can he give us a good shot when he needs to? We just need to get back to basics.

Boucher hopes the Senators learn and grow from the third-period collapse. With the injury bug hitting the defense at the wrong time after the Bruins were relatively healthy all year, winning this playoff series will be a tall task for Boston. Between them, they combined for 94 goals and 28 points in the regular season.

Ottawa’s offense, since that same point in early February, has dried up in a big way.

“The last few games I thought we had an easier time getting to their end to play”, Cassidy said. After he got settled in and the game progressed, it was hard to remember that he’s still a teenager.

Kings: L.A fired coach Darryl Sutter and general manager Dean Lombardi, and promoted former defenseman Rob Blake to vice president and general manager, while longtime executive Luc Robitaille will be its new team president in charge of all hockey and business operations.

BOSTON (AP) – Bruce Cassidy knows how to handle the pre-playoff jitters this time.

The veteran defenceman has been sidelined with a hand injury to his left pinky finger as a result of a Sidney Crosby slash March 23, but says he continues improving.

“That’s why we’re in the playoffs right now”, Boucher said.

Boucher repeated Friday that Methot “was ready to go last game” but the Senators don’t want to put him in a situation where he’s not helpful. Tuukka Rask was 37-20-5 with a 2.23 goals-against average and.915 save percentage.

Ideally the Senators would like to see Mark Stone break out of a career-high 16-game goal-less drought. Rookie Brandon Carlo, the season-long partner of captain Zdeno Chara, definitely won’t play Game 1 (and likely more than that) after being hammered into the boards by Washington’s Alexander Ovechkin in last Saturday’s regular season finale and sustaining an upper body malady.

For the first time this season Kyle Turris will find himself between Clarke MacArthur and Bobby Ryan.