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BRUINS 4, THRASHERS 2][ Game stats ]
Dafoe pulls out stops in thrashing of Atlanta
Ken Belanger, Darren Van Impe, and Dave Andreychuk (two) all scored for the Bruins, who hadn't won six straight since February/March 1994. The current streak is their longest in the post-Garden era. Four-plus years out of the beloved barn, they have cracked the combination to the Vault (without the aid of Geraldo Rivera).
A crowd of 16,883 came to Causeway to see the Bruins win for the fourth straight time on home ice. They now have gone seven straight without a loss (6-0-1), the victory nudging them over .500 (6-5-4) for the first time this season.
Dafoe, playing for the first time since inking his three-year, $9.45 million deal, had a relatively easy time of it. He stopped 13 of 14 shots in the first two periods - very light work - and carried a two-goal lead into the third period. He finished with 21 stops.
''It was important for me to have that type of game,'' said Dafoe, who had Rob Tallas watching from the bench as his trusty backup.
''It was a solid game, a building ground for me, and I needed that, because I know the next game will come very soon and it will be a lot tougher.''
The long-armed sharpshooting Andreychuk potted goals 10 and 11, the second coming with 1:05 to play, only 13 seconds after Andrew Brunette pulled the Thrashers to within 3-2 on a power-play strike. At this pace, the 36-year-old Andreychuk easily could crack 50 goals, which would make him the first Bruin to do so since Cam Neely.
''For some guys [goal scoring] is a little bit of a God-given thing,'' said Andreychuk. ''But you have to work hard, too. For me, I'd say some of it's God-given, and getting in the right spot. When you're in the right spot, the puck just seems to come to you, even if you aren't having a great game.''
Belanger scored the only goal in the first period, providing the Bruins with a 1-0 lead with only 4:24 ticked off the clock. The hard-working winger tipped the puck away from Mike Stapleton behind the Atlanta net, reached out front from behind the goal line, and stuffed his first goal of the season inside the right post.
Dafoe made a couple of nice stops in the period, the first coming only 15 seconds into the action when hard-shooting Petr Buzek hammered a slapper from the top of the left circle. Dafoe steered it to the opposite wing. With 10:20 gone, and the Thrashers shorthanded, rookie sensation Patrik Stefan broke in on right wing and snapped off a wrister that Dafoe knocked away with a clever toe save.
The 28-year-old netminder was showing no signs of rust.
The Thrashers came back with an early goal in the second to tie it, 1-1, but the Bruins struck twice in the final two minutes to carry a 3-1 lead into the third.
With 1:20 gone, only moments after their power play expired, the Thrashers tied it when Per Svartvadet collected a Johan Garpenlov feed and flipped an 8-foot wrister under the crossbar. Dafoe didn't have much of a chance to stop it.
The Bruins were working with a power play of their own at 1:47 when Van Impe struck for his second goal in as many games, again unloading one of his steaming slappers. The puck came to Van Impe high in the slot after an Anson Carter (two assists) feed into the middle slid off Steve Heinze's stick. Van Impe, working the right point, quickly closed into the middle and hammered in the 2-1 lead.
The crusher for the expansionists came with 36 seconds left in the period when the Goliath-like Andreychuk muscled out from behind the left post and slid a wraparound shot through Damian Rhodes's legs. In control behind the net, he first motioned as if he would come out front from behind the right post, reversed field, and powered out from behind the left post, carrying Atlanta defenseman Chris Tamer on his back.
''If you could teach that,'' said Bruins head coach Pat Burns, ''you'd have a lot of 500-goal scorers in the NHL. Some guys have it. Some don't. He knows the right time to hit it.''
This story ran on page C01 of the Boston Globe on 11/07/99.
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he longer they go, the easier it gets. A jumbled collection of shattered pieces only a couple of weeks ago, the repair-on-the-run Bruins rattled off their sixth straight win last night, a 4-2 rubout of the expansionist Atlanta Thrashers, backed by their nouveau riche netminder, Byron Dafoe.