I was way too busy watching football Sunday to write an installment for the Coyotes game, so I’m coupling up the weekend games here.

Saturday night was a refreshing boost of energy from the Bruins. Zdeno Chara actually stepped up with a goal and a pair of assists, and raised his game as a captain should. All the right guys got it done. Brad Marchand had a juicy top shelf goal on the backhand, and David Pastrnak netted one too (really he just took a Chara slapshot off the ribs and it found the net, but oh well).

A dozen players recorded at least a point, as the Bs put away the Coyotes 6-2. There were a lot of contributions from the entire lineup; several rookies made the score sheet. More importantly, they were making more clean, crisp passes in all three zones and played a disciplined game. Facing backup goalie Louis Domingue might have helped their cause, but nonetheless a win is a win. Good job boys.

They say take the good with the bad. Ugh, well Sunday night was the ugly. I’ll admit I saw Marchand and even Chara care again, but the Bruins made no clean plays. Both teams were slopping their way up and down the ice; it was all just dump ins to no one and turnovers in the neutral zone.

Oh yeah, remember Malcolm Subban, that guy who the Bruins cut because he couldn’t stop a beach ball from getting past him? Well, he was 30 seconds away from shutting out the team that drafted him, if not for a late goal by Pasta. Expect to see more of Subban’s development in the near future too, as the Golden Knights currently have starting goalie Marc-Andre Fluery on IR.

While the youngster Subban was easily stopping all of the Bruins harmless bids on goal, Boston allowed both Alex Tuch and Vadim Shipachyov to record each of their first ever NHL goals. That’s to be expected from an expansion team that has a patchwork lineup, but the Bs always seem to have a knack for allowing not-so-talented players to look like heroes (see Games 2 & 3 against Colorado and you’ll know what I’m talking about). Granted, Shipachyov is 30 years old and has been dominating the Russian KHL circuit for some number of years now, but it was a lazy goal that the Bruins defense should have been more alert to.

I’ve always been a firm believer in the saying “If you win faceoffs, you win hockey games.” Well, Vegas managed to double the Bruins faceoff wins, and that’s even after taking a penalty for a double violation in the first period. That might have just been a side effect of fatigue from playing two games in under 24 hours, but that needs to improve greatly. If only there was a certain Center out there who could help in that department…?

Over the next three weeks the Bruins play 7 out of 8 games at home, with several chunks of days off to get healthy and iron out some kinks. They better take care of business on home ice, because fans were left with a pretty sour taste in their mouth after last Monday’s 4-0 defeat to Colorado.