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BRUINS 2, COYOTES 0 [ Game stats ]
They finally snag a victory
The Bruins ended their winless streak at six games (0-3-3) last night with a nail-biting 2-0 victory over the Phoenix Coyotes at the FleetCenter.
It seemed as if no one should've breathed a bigger sigh of relief than coach Pat Burns, who had been kept up nights through this dismal stretch looking for an offensive spark. But Burns said it wasn't a relief at all. It was one win, a single victory in the course of an 82-game schedule. In large part, though, it was more.
Burns swapped around his top two lines, breaking up center Jason Allison and left wing Dave Andreychuk in an effort to get both going. He put Allison with left wing Sergei Samsonov and right wing Anson Carter and moved Andreychuk to a line with center Joe Thornton and right wing Joe Murphy. Allison, after a hiatus because of a sore forearm, was back taking (and winning) faceoffs and looked like his old self.
Meanwhile, goaltender Byron Dafoe earned his 18th career shutout and first of the season, making 32 saves. It was the first Boston shutout over the Phoenix/Winnipeg franchise since Ray Bourque's career debut back on Oct. 11, 1979, and it was the first time since ending a contract stalemate Oct. 29 that Dafoe looked like his old self.
Dafoe thought his strong performance may have been partly the result of a talk he had with Burns after Saturday's loss to Detroit.
''I felt like I wasn't coming up with the big save at crucial parts of the game that I felt I had done in the past,'' said Dafoe, who initiated the meeting with his coach. ''It was definitely good for peace of mind to know what Pat was thinking and maybe it translated into me playing a little better tonight, I don't know. Maybe it put my mind at ease a little bit.''
After a few games in which his ice time was down, Allison logged a yeoman's 24 shifts and was second only to Bourque with 23 minutes 54 seconds. Bourque had a game-high 28:25.
''I saw a great game from Jason Allison,'' said Burns. ''I thought he played a tremendous game, with and without the puck, and that's what we were waiting for him to do.
''I thought Allison really took some faceoffs tonight, crucial ones, right down to the last one, and he really showed a lot of character there.''
The Bruins got all the offense they would need with a Samsonov power-play goal at 10:40 of the first period.
A little luck before that didn't hurt. At 6:49, the Coyotes had a near-goal experience when center Juha Ylonen fired a shot that slipped behind Dafoe and trickled along the goal line. As Dafoe dove backward to try to grab it, defenseman Marty McSorley swept it away.
That, and Samsonov's goal, gave Boston a big lift.
''I think we had a good game as a line,'' said Samsonov. ''We were getting a lot of turnovers and a lot of chances to score, especially in the first period, and didn't really spend a lot of time in our defensive zone.''
The Coyotes tried to make it a game in the second period as they outshot the Bruins, 14-7, but Dafoe came up big and the Bruins managed to keep Phoenix's potent offensive weapons pinned to the outside.
One of Dafoe's toughest saves came at 8:06 on Ylonen, whose shot hit the goalie and dropped down. Dafoe wrapped his entire body around the puck and corraled it.
In the third period, about a minute after weathering a ferocious Phoenix storm, Dafoe made his biggest save of the night when he stopped a David Oliver shot with his stick at 14:11.
Rob DiMaio sealed it with an empty-net goal with 20 seconds left.
It was a victory - the Bruins' first since Nov. 24 - and, at midseason, it made all the difference that Dafoe seemed in midseason form.
''I think it's more mental than physical right now for him, and that's normal, too, for the amount of time that he missed,'' said Burns. ''He was in the zone and in the groove tonight and I'm glad to see that.''
This story ran on page E01 of the Boston Globe on 12/14/99.
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he hand-wringing is over - for now, anyway.