Bruins Clobber Leafs 7-2, Savard Gets Hat Trick

The Boston Bruins ruined Phil Kessel's return to Boston, rolling up a huge 7-0 lead late into the 3rd period as Marc Savard scored three times. Bruins netminder Tuukka Rask played almost 56 minutes of shut out hockey as the Bruins completely dominated Toronto Maple Leafs. Boston's seven goals matched the team's game high total that they had back on October 3rd when they beat the Carolina Hurricanes 7-2.

Marco Sturm opened the scoring by tipping in his 9th goal of the year past Toronto's Joey MacDonald at 5:28 of the 1st period. Savard netted his first of three, snapping in a rebound from a deflection by Byron Bitz on a Zdeno Chara wrist shot from the blue line. Chara scored only his 2nd goal this season unassisted as he grabbed a lose puck and blasted a shot past MacDonald early in the 2nd period. Then Savard scored a power play goal to put Boston up 4-0 at 14:45 of the period. The Bruins were having some problems with the man advantage, giving up several chances to the shorthanded Leafs, but Rask made some excellent saves (particularly the one toe save) and Toronto sagged noticeably after Savard's goal.

Patrice Bergeron went end to end getting right into Leaf goalie Vesa Toskala, who had replaced MacDonald at the beginning of the 3rd. Toskula stopped Bergeron, but Mark Recchi was trailing and popped in his 5th of the year. Boston's Johnny Boychuk, a recent call-up from Providence of the AHL, got his 1st ever NHL goal 12:26 of the 3rd. The big defenseman was only playing in his 9th NHL game. Finally, Savard scored his hat trick goal only 19 seconds after Boychuk's goal and the hats rained down in Boston as the Bruins' faithful celebrated.

With the Bruins up 7-0, Rask was trying for his 2nd shut out of the year, but he was denied by Toronto's Niklas Hagman who scored his team-high 14th goal on his 30th birthday, perhaps the only real bright spot in an otherwise lackluster Leafs performance. Mikhail Grabovski scored his 5th goal with slightly more than 2 minutes remaining.

The Leafs will be playing twice more, then returning to Boston for a rematch on Thursday. The loss snapped Toronto's road win streak at 4, while the Bruins sport a 7-1-1 record in their last 9 games, with the only loss that 5-1 loss against Montreal the night before. Toronto's Phil Kessel was limited to only a couple of shots and coughed up the puck on Chara's goal that made it 3-0. Kessel was a minus 3 for the night after scoring twice in the Leafs' 6-3 win in Columbus on Thursday.

Marc Savard scored three goals for Boston, his third career hat trick and first in several years.