Bruins Take Northeast Division Lead With Shootout Win Over Sens

The early season slump the Boston Bruins suffered through now seems to be in the distant past as the Bruins beat the Ottawa Senators to take over top spot in the Northeast Division with a 4-3 shoot out victory.

Sens captain Daniel Alfredsson, who had a great game in the losing cause, opened the scoring with his 9th goal, beating Bruins goalie Tim Thomas with a blast front the slot 5 minutes into the 1st period. Two and a half minutes later Alfredsson assisted on Milan Michalek's power play goal that put Ottawa up 2-0.

In the 2nd, David Krejci and Michael Ryder tied it up 2-2 with their own power play markers past Sens goalie Brian Elliott, while Dennis Wideman scored for the Bruins at 9:19 of the 3rd (also on the power play) to give the Bruins a 3-2 edge.

It looked as though Boston might steal the win, but Michalek scored with a mere 20 seconds left in regulation to force overtime. Michalek flew down the left wing and somehow got the puck to trickle between Thomas' pads for his 2nd of the game. OT as usual, meant little, and the teams went to the shootout. Boston had lost a 2-1 shoot out game to the New Jersey Devils the night before. This was actually Boston's 3rd straight game that went to a shoot out and 5th shoot out in the franchise's last nine games! Anyway, it went down like this:

Patrice Bergeron BOS Save
Alexei Kovalev OTT Save
Blake Wheeler BOS Save
Jason Spezza OTT Save
David Krejci BOS Save
Daniel Alfredsson OTT Save
Michael Ryder BOS Goal
Mike Fisher OTT Save

Both goalies were great in the shoot out, but Michael Ryder put it away for the Bruins, leaving Fisher with all the pressure to keep the game going, but Thomas denied the Ottawa center.

With the win over divisional rival Ottawa, Boston now sits precariously in first place in the Northeast Division with 31 points, one up on both Buffalo and Ottawa, while the Montreal Canadiens are 5 points behind the Bruins. Both the Sabres and Senators do have games in hand on Boston who have a 6-1-2 record in their last 10 games.

Ottawa is off until December 3rd, when they go to the west coast to play the Los Angeles Kings. The Bruins next play Wednesday, when they host the Tampa Bay Lightning.